Sugar Along the Manatee: Major Robert Gamble, Jr. and the
Development of Gamble Plantation 69
By Michael G. Schene

List of Members 83

COPYRIGHT 1981 BY THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN FLORIDA

is published annually by the Historical Association of Southern
VL etCSt^ Florida. Communications should be addressed to the Corresponding
Secretary of the Society, 3290 South Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida
33129. The Association does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or opinions
made by contributors.

One of the most striking vistas on the east coast of Florida today is the
panoramic view from the old DuBois home, perched high atop an ancient
Indian shell mound in northern Palm Beach County. To the northwest
across the broad Loxahatchee River the stately old Jupiter Lighthouse,
which was first lit in 1860, stands sentinel on a high point of land at the
confluence of the Loxahatchee and Indian Rivers. The tidal basin thus
formed flows swiftly to meet the Atlantic Ocean some three quarters of a
mile to the east at the treacherous and beautiful Jupiter inlet. Upstream
beyond the town of Jupiter the river also branches into a north and south
fork, each of which meanders for miles through stands of native palm and
hardwood hammocks. The north fork of the Loxahatchee, in particular, is
counted among the significant "wild rivers" remaining in this country.
Despite the influx of population which has recently begun to crowd the
water's edge, this picturesque region still retains much of the charm
which attracted young Harry DuBois when he first saw it in the 1880's.'
Since that time the DuBois family has been an integral part of the Jupiter
area's social history, and in many respects they reflect a life-style typical
of many other pioneer families whose fortunes rose or declined in

*Dr. Kersey is a professor of education at Florida Atlantic University. His previous
articles in Tequesta include "The 'Friends of the Seminole Society,' 1899-1926"
(XXXIV) and "The Dania Indian School, 1927-1936" (Dr. Kersey with coauthor Mark S.
Goldman) (XXXIX).
This study was made possible in part by a grant from the Council on Humanistic
Values for Palm Beach County which is supported by the Chastain Foundation.

6 TEQUESTA

successive stages of the state's evolution. Moreover, it has been a family
possessed of an unusual sense of its own and the region's cultural history,
probably due in great part to the fact that their homestead contained one
of the most significant archaeological sites along the southeast coast of
Florida: the great shell mound location of the Hobe Indian village where
the Quaker merchant Jonathan Dickinson and his party were taken as
captives in 1696.2
Harry DuBois, a native of Monmouth County, N.J., was the son of a
farmer who could trace his lineage back to two French Huguenot
brothers who arrived in America during the 1690's. Harry first came
south to Florida at age 16 to work throughout the winter months in the
orange groves around Titusville and Merritt Island.3 The natural beauty
and lure of the warm climate ultimately led him to relocate permanently
in the Jupiter area about 1892. The inhabitants of the little settlement
which had grown up around the old lighthouse depended primarily upon
farming and fishing as a source of income, and life was slow paced. Then
in 1889, through a political quirk, the voters of Dade County opted to
move the county seat from Miami to Juno on the north shore of Lake
Worth. This move catapulted Jupiter into the role of an economic and
transportation center. The steam boats operating on the Indian River
could navigate no farther south than the Loxahatchee River, then cargo
had to be transported overland and reloaded on the lake steamer and
sailboats plying Lake Worth. A hack line operated between the two
points after 1885, but it was not sufficient to meet the transportation
needs of the area, so in 1890 the Plant System completed a narrow gauge
railroad to haul freight and passengers over the seven and one-half miles
which separated Jupiter from Juno.4 The line was inevitably dubbed the
"Celestial Railroad" with its terminals in Jupiter and Juno, and nominal
stops at Venus and Mars. The quaint line soon gained national attention
for its three colorful miniature engines and rolling stock, as well as
personnel who played tunes such as "Dixie" on the train whistle or
stopped for impromptu hunting excursions. Another oddity was the lack
of a turntable which made it necessary that the train back up the entire
way on the Juno to Jupiter leg.
In 1892 business was booming and the town of Jupiter was platted
around the area of the railroad docks on the south bank of the
Loxahatchee opposite the lighthouse. Two years later H. M. Flagler's
Florida East Coast Railway, which had been working its way down.the
east coast from St. Augustine, bypassed Jupiter to the west laying a track
to West Palm Beach. With this, the fortunes of Juno began to decline.

The John DuBois Family of Jupiter 7

Most of the law and business firms left Juno for the growing new city at
the temporary terminus of the railroad which would eventually extend to
Miami. When another vote was held in 1899, the county seat would be
returned permanently to Miami. Jupiter also suffered an economic rever-
sal when the "Celestial Railroad" ceased operating in 1895, and the
Indian River steamers no longer brought freight and passengers to the
docks on the Loxahatchee. The community returned to its sleepy exis-
tence and became just another stop on the Florida East Coast Railway, the
station being located in West Jupiter near the site originally designated as
Neptune.5 While the DuBois family had no direct involvement with the
"Celestial Railroad', many of the other townspeople were adversely
impacted by its demise.
As a young man, Harry DuBois engaged in a variety of occupations
and economic ventures to sustain himself. For example, when the Flagler
railroad began to build southward from Titusville, he acquired a 40-foot
"sharpie" rigged with twin leg o' mutton sails and hauled building
materials into the Palm Beach docks. Perhaps the most glamorous
position that he held was as a member of the U.S. Life Saving Station
crew which operated at Jupiter Inlet from 1886-96.6 Under the command
of Captain Charles R. Carlin, the station was located on the beach south
of the inlet, and its main function was to provide assistance to vessels
caught in the tricky seas near Jupiter. The six members of the crew were
all powerful swimmers and excellent seamen who knew the vagaries of
the local water which could bring disaster to unwary boaters. The Life
Saving Station was closed after the extension of the railroad to Miami and
the opening of the Intracoastal Waterway made it unnecessary for travel-
ers to venture outside the inlet.
The Life Saving Station always shut down during the summer
months, so DuBois of necessity turned to other pursuits. In the 1890's he
purchased 18 acres of land known as Stone's Point on the Loxahatchee
River. The central feature of this tract was the massive oyster shell mound
some twenty feet high and over six hundred feet long. On the level ground
he planted numerous orange trees and, later, banana plants. The citrus
never thrived due to their proximity to the ocean, since the salt air tended
to retard growth. However, the bananas flourished enough to become
profitable DuBois sold them for 1v per finger in West Palm Beach,
which was a good price for that era. Earlier he had bought twenty acres
which was planted in pineapples along the Intracoastal Waterway; there
was also a small packing house on the property. The building was later
dismantled and moved to the shell mound, and is probably the oldest

8 TEQUESTA

- TJ '. .
4-,., ^ -
v, i ^ ;L-.*
h,- -. ^ < .

The crew of the Life Saving Station at Jupiter about 1895. Harry DuBois is at the
right with folded arms.
frame building surviving in Jupiter to this day. The pineapples were
packed and shipped north by train; a cider press was also employed to
extract the juice which was bottled and sold. It was difficult to raise
pineapples on the low land where frost settled and often killed the crown

The John DuBois Family of Jupiter 9

Earliest known photo of DuBois house atop the shell ridge. About 1896. A second
story was added a few years later.

or bloom of the fruit, and lath sheds had to be built to prevent freezing.
Even so, the prices for pineapples began a steady decline, due in part to
competition from Cuban growers starting around the turn of the century.7
It soon became more profitable for DuBois to turn to raising bees for
honey. He also began off-shore commercial fishing, catching pompano
which could be sold for 25v per pound at the Royal Poinciana Hotel in
Palm Beach.
In 1898, Harry DuBois married a young teacher, Susan Sanders, and
brought his bride to the new home he had built on the shell mound. She
was a graduate of a Kansas normal school who had come to Florida the
previous summer to join her father and brother at their homestead on
Lake Worth. In her memoirs she recounts "There were five men to every
woman and school teachers were very scarce. The teacher's examination
for that year had been held before I arrived so they sent me to Titusville to
take the examination there.... The school house west of Stuart was an
8x12 palmetto shack with no floor and no desk for me but a box to sit on.
The children sat on a long backless bench with a continuous slanting
board in front to prop their books against. There was a desk and bench
down each side of the room and a place for me to walk up and down in the
center. When it rained the roof leaked so badly I had to put up my
umbrella. I taught children, just beginners to some almost as old as I was,
for the princely sum of $40 per month. My board and washing was $10 a
month."8
The young teacher's living conditions were not much better, for in
the home where she stayed it was necessary to share a bed with a
twelve-year-old girl. Only a hanging boat sail separated them from the
other members of the family who occupied the single-room dwelling.
Luckily, within six nionths she was transferred to the school in Jupiter

10 TEQUESTA

and soon met her future husband. The story is told that they met on a
blind date on a dark night, and it was not until they rowed over to the
lighthouse and climbed to the top that they got a good look at each other;
apparently it was love at first sight. As with succeeding generations,
much of their courting took place around the Jupiter Lighthouse and on
the beaches, as there was little else to do in those days. Apparently only
the first floor of their home on the shell mound was completed prior to the
wedding, and a second story was added at a later date. Their first child,
John, was born there in 1899, followed by Henry, Anna and Neil. All are
still living with their families in the vicinity of Jupiter and West Palm
Beach. Nevertheless, it is the family of John Rue DuBois which has
remained at the original shell mound homestead over the ensuing de-
cades, and provides the historical linkage between the site and the
DuBois name.
John's earliest memories are of playing about the shell mound, or
fishing and boating in the Loxahatchee and along the Atlantic beaches.
His childhood years were an almost idyllic existence for a young boy in
turn-of-the-century Florida. He and his brothers and sister attended the
elementary school at Neptune beginning in 1905. The post office at the
south end of the railroad bridge retained that name until it was merged
with the Jupiter post office in 1908, and Neptune passed into history.9 The
youngsters who lived along the river were transported there each day on a
"school boat" originally operated by C.P. Jackson. This unique craft was
a converted lifeboat from the battleship Maine, and bore the same
name.?0 The DuBois children often had to meet the boat at a point about a
half-mile from their home, when the current was too swift near the inlet
for the boat to come to their own dock. Nor was the daily trip to school
always boring, as the children often fished along the way. John remem-
bers that he caught his first bluefish trolling from the back of the school
boat. In 1911, a new school was built in Jupiter with elementary grades
housed on the ground floor, and secondary instruction being offered
through the 10th grade upstairs. A student wishing to complete high
school had to go to West Palm Beach for the remaining two years of
schooling. John DuBois completed his work at the Jupiter school, then
joined his father in the family enterprises.
One of his first tasks was to supervise the removal of a good portion
of the shell mound, which was sold in 1917 as road building material for
the town of Lake Park. John took great care to see that any artifacts found
in the mound were carefully preserved, and many items were later
examined and classified by scientists at the Florida State Museum.'1 One

The John DuBois Family of Jupiter 11

piece of fibre-tempered pottery was dated from the era 500 B.C. In the
mound it was found that blackened ash from fires formed layers between
the oyster shells, bones of fish and animals, celts, shell tools and sherds
of pottery which gave evidence of the people who lived on the boundary
of the inlet for centuries before Europeans arrived. The first on-site study
of the mound was made in 1896 by a noted archaeologist but the findings
were never published. In 1965 a systematic excavation of the greatly
attenuated mound was made by archaeologists from Florida Atlantic
University, but the site yielded no additional significant material.12
The DuBois, father and son, were acknowledged to be expert
seamen, and engaged in numerous rescue and salvage missions around
the Jupiter Inlet.13 There was little profit derived from these ventures, but
they did create an extensive family collection of ships' bells, sextants,
sounding leads, log books, and similar paraphernalia. This collection
represents a historical cross section of the Jupiter maritime tradition
which would be valuable to any future museum in the area. The only real
money to be made from the sea, however, came from the less glamorous
chore of fishing.
For many years John had worked with his father in their commer-
cial fishing operation. Just off Jupiter the Gulf Stream reaches one of its
closest points to the Florida shore, bringing benefits of a mild climate and
unparalleled fishing. They would set their nets several hundred yards
off-shore at night, and the natural drift of the Gulf Stream would sweep
them northward and toward the shore line. If they caught just five or six
pompano or other expensive fish each evening, that was considered
"making wages". John always received 10% of the profit from the catch,
which he banked, so he generally had cash to fund other undertakings.
For example, after he left school his father suggested that they expand
their apiary business, so John moved to the Delray-Boynton area and
began buying up hives. He built an 8 x 10 building on cleared land as a
collection center, and used an old Model-T open body truck to transport
the raw honey for extracting in Jupiter. When World War I started, honey
sold for 35v a gallon and the bees were soon paid for; in one year the
DuBois shipped over 90,000 pounds of honey to northern markets. The
honey business was continued until the hurricanes of 1926 and 1928
dispersed most of the bees across the peninsula.14 Unfortunately, Harry
DuBois had developed pernicious anemia and passed away in 1925. He
had been his son's mentor and business partner, and left a legacy of
independence, initiative and self-reliance which became a family tradi-
tion. When most of the family holdings were purchased for a Palm Beach

12 TEQUESTA

County Park in 1972, one of the conditions was that the site be named in
honor of Harry DuBois' Family.
In the year preceding his father's death, John acquired another
partner who was to remain with him for over fifty years: his wife. In 1914,
eleven-year-old Bessie Wilson moved to Jupiter with her family from
New Jersey. Her father was a wholesale florist who came to raise plants in
a warm climate, and he established a fernery on fifty acres at Limestone
Creek. Although there were business difficulties and her mother died
three years after their arrival, the Wilsons remained, with young Bessie
assuming many of the household duties for her family. She soon met the
tall DuBois boy while attending the local school, and a romance began
which was to last a lifetime. In 1919, John Wilson purchased a car so
Bessie could finish high school in West Palm Beach, and she graduated
in 1923. On June 23, 1924, Bessie and John DuBois were married.
Following their marriage John brought Bessie home to a "honeymoon
cottage" which he had built to the west of the shell mound and fronting
the river. It was not long before they began to raise a family. A daughter,
Susan, was born in 1925, followed by Doris (1926), Louise (1926) and
Harry (1929).
Like other youngsters growing up in south Florida early in this
century, John and Bessie fondly recall the visits of the colorful Seminole
Indians who came to trade with local merchants. They usually arrived in
covered wagons drawn by oxen or horses, and traded such items as otter
pelts, 'coon skins and alligator hides, as well as livestock. Around 1914
the Indians brought live pigs to the store of Pennington "Pa" Kitching,
brother of the famous Indian trader Capt. Walter Kitching of Stuart, and
everyone knew they were in town by the raucous squealing. At Frank
Bowers' store similar items were traded, and John remembers that the
Seminoles came with large tin cans to be filled with lard which they used
for cooking. He also confirmed that the Indians bought and paid for one
item at a time, which was their pattern of conducting business at other
trading centers during this era.15 Aside from their transactions with the
store keepers, the Indians had very little contact with other people in the
community although it was recalled that as late as the 1930's they
continued to sell deer meat and huckleberries to the townspeople. In later
years a well-known Seminole, Billy Bowlegs III, visited the DuBois
home in Jupiter. His portrait, drawn by the famous artist of Indian life in
Florida, Jim Hutchinson, is a treasured family memento.
It seemed that when the Indians traveled they brought everything
that they owned with them. They made temporary camps on a spot of

The John DuBois Family of Jupiter 13

high ground at present day Center Street, near to Kitching's store. At
certain times of the year schools of large fish would enter the inlet and
become trapped there by shifting sand bars and tides; then the Seminoles
appeared in their canoes off the DuBois home on the shell mound,
spearing the fish in great numbers. John never discovered how the
Seminoles learned the fish were in the inlet, but the Indians always
seemed to arrive when they were there. At one time it was possible for a
Seminole to pole a canoe all the way from Indiantown to Jupiter using the
backwaters of the Loxahatchee River.
By 1926 the federal highway was completed to Miami, and a bridge
spanned the Loxahatchee at Jupiter. Almost immediately the DuBois
property which was closest to the inlet became accessible to sportsmen,
and a fishing camp operation was developed. This was a natural out-
growth of the family's ability to derive a living from the inlet and river
environs. Furthermore, it provided the only steady source of income for
the young couple during some lean years.
There were times when John, hard pressed to meet the needs of his
family, wondered if he had not made a mistake in abandoning the apiary
business prematurely. In 1929, to supplement their income from renting
boats and selling bait, the DuBois opened a restaurant in a 30 x 40 gray
shingled building; it became an immediate success with a well-deserved
reputation for fine seafood. The restaurant was a family affair, with
Bessie supervising the kitchen and dining room, and the children doing
all manner of odd jobs. John personally supplied most of the fish,
harvested oysters from the upper Loxahatchee and Hobe Sound, and
even dug clams in a little stream which ran through the eastern end of
their property. The restaurant remained open until 1942, when the
gasoline rationing and blackout restrictions imposed by World War II
made it impossible to continue operating.
The 1920's marked the era of Prohibition in the United States, and
the Jupiter Inlet was a central point of entry for rum runners operating
from the Bahamas. "Often in the night," Bessie wrote, "the sound of a
high-powered motor could be heard above the breaking of ground swells
as the heavily laden rum boats entered the inlet. The three branches of the
Loxahatchee, the inland waterway and the Indian River offered coves and
dense cover where the liquor could be concealed or unloaded. One dark
and windy night in February, 1925, such a boat loaded with choice
liquors, capsized on the bar. The rum runners jumped for their lives. As
they swam in the chilly water, the boat unbelievably righted itself, circled
them and then ran aground upon the beach south of the inlet. At daybreak

14 TEQUESTA

another boat arrived and began to salvage the precious 'hams' of liquor,
as the burlap sacks holding the bottles were called. When townspeople
and fishermen began to arrive the rum runners withdrew. Fishermen
hooking into the burlap bags spilled into the surf had a memorable day
of sport."16
During part of the "Roaring Twenties" John DuBois was the
Constable of District One in Palm Beach County. He first assumed the
post in 1928 and served more than twenty years. One of his duties entailed
working with federal agents sent to stanch the flow of illicit alcohol into
the country through the inlet. They also attempted to find and destroy the
stills of bootleggers in the woodlands around Jupiter; these duties led to
some memorable incidents. One moonlit night dogs were barking and
people were sneaking around, and a federal agent came to John for
support in apprehending a boat which was coming through. In the dark
they became separated, but John waited until the boat came under the
bridge then he jumped down onto the bow, pulled his gun and placed the
two occupants under arrest. Unfortunately, the boat was continuing on its
way down the river and away from the federal agent who was calling out
for John. Eventually he got the boat under control, handcuffed the
prisoners, and took them over to the Coast Guard station at the lighthouse
where a call was placed to Miami for assistance.
Occasionally he accompanied the "prohis", as the prohibition en-
forcement officers were called, on forays into the back country to break
up stills. In one instance, a still was on the land of Bill Ashley at Fruita,
north of Hobe Sound. Ashley was the last surviving brother of John
Ashley, head of the notorious gang of bank robbers and rum runners
which had terrorized the southeast coast of Florida during the 'teens and
early twenties.17 Most of the Ashley gang had been killed in a shootout at
Sebastian Inlet in 1924; nevertheless, given the family's known propen-
sity for violence, one did not undertake lightly the destruction of a still
within sight of an Ashley house. After chopping up the still and burning
the mash boxes, the party drove up to the house where they were greeted
cordially by old Bill Ashley, had a drink of water, and left without
incident-much to John's relief. For the most part, the rum running days
around Jupiter Inlet were spared the bloodshed that marked the liquor
traffic along other parts of the Florida coast.
Over the centuries, the Jupiter Inlet had been closed numerous
times due to natural causes, a condition reported in many historical
accounts. As early as 1775, the Dutch cartographer Bernard Romans
visited the inlet while it was sealed, and many military men who fre-

The John DuBois Family of Jupiter 15

quented the region during the Second Seminole War (1835-42) provided
graphic descriptions of the silted up entrance being forced open by
natural pressure of the river, only to be closed up again due to adverse
winds and tides. Moreover, the mouth of the inlet also seems to have
changed periodically for, according to Bessie DuBois, "In early days the
inlet was several hundred yards south of the present location. The map of
the Fort Jupiter Reservation dated 1855 shows the inlet in this position.
The present location of the inlet was fixed when by a special act of the
Florida Legislature, a Jupiter Inlet District was formed in 1921. In 1921
land values were very low and only a few hundred people lived in the
newly formed district. The deepening of the Inland Waterway north and
south of the inlet relieved much of the pressure that in olden days had
burst the inlet open in times of fall floods. Funds for dredging were not
always available. There were sad times when the inlet was closed."18
John DuBois was first elected to membership on the Jupiter Inlet
Commission in 1936. There were three members and they made $2 per
meeting up to a maximum of $100 annually The other two members
elected themselves secretary and treasurer respectively, and John became
the odd vote more often than not. Although keeping the inlet open was a
vital concern to all interests in the region, the commission often made
political decisions to placate the tax payers and land owners of the
district.
The financial problems of the Inlet District became particularly
acute during the Depression years. As Bessie DuBois described the
situation, "The 1930's were a period of great frustration for the men who
served as inlet commissioners. One of these, John R. DuBois, served for
twenty of the leanest years. There were times during the depression when
the Inlet District barely had money to pay the interest on bonds. There
was no money for maintenance or improvements. Appeals to Washington
brought a concerned response from Congresswoman Ruth Bryan Owen
who visited the inlet several times and did all in her power to secure
government aid without success.... Several surveys have been made but
the sad conclusion was that the benefits did not justify the expense. Since
1921 when the Jupiter Inlet was formed the northern part of the District,
Hobe Sound, had been made into part of Martin County. Although two
thirds of the area drained by Jupiter Inlet District was in Martin County,
the tax paying citizens did not want to be taxed for an inlet in Palm Beach
County so they withdrew from the district in 1945. For many years the
sand dredged from the inlet had been pumped on the north side of the
inlet filling in what had been a marshy area. In 1954 this large tract of

16 TEQUESTA

wilderness fronting on the ocean and river was purchased by developer
Charles Martyn. It became the Jupiter Inlet Beach Colony, an area of
beautiful homes. In 1956 Mr. Martyn developed Tequesta farther up the
Loxahatchee."19
The dredging of the inlet also contributed to the expansion of the
DuBois holdings, although on a minor scale by comparison to the
development of the north shore of the inlet. Those members who had
consistently ordered the fill dumped on the north shore found that this
was no longer possible after the land was sold and the profit made. Only
then did they turn to the DuBois family for permission to dump the fill on
their shore line. This was not without its complications, however, as an
overzealous dredge operator blocked the access from the DuBois marina
to deep water. After prolonged negotiations the channel was reopened
but even then the family had to bear part of the cost. Moreover, they also
had to purchase the newly created land from the Florida Internal
Improvement Fund. Eventually the fill from the dredging added some
eight acres to the DuBois waterfront properties.
Like other Floridians during the Great Depression, the DuBois
found themsleves in severe financial straits. Although their home and
property were secure, there was little hard cash available in the commun-
ity To generate additional income John took a job in 1936 as a guard at the
estate of Harold G. Vanderbilt in Manalapan. His $60 per month salary
was helpful in keeping the restaurant open, but he felt that he was wearing
out his Ford automobile making the daily trip. When Vanderbilt refused
his request for a salary raise, John resigned the position and turned it over
to his sister's husband.
Another source of income for the DuBois family during this era was
renting out the old family home to wealthy winter visitors in the Jupiter
area. Perhaps the most memorable family to lease the house was that of a
Yale professor emeritus, Dr. Charles M. Andrews and his wife
Evangeline, who first came in the winter of 1935. The Andrews soon
became enthralled with the old Indian mound site as the result of a
unique gift. "They," according to Mrs. DuBois, "were visited by one of
Dr. Andrews' former students, Mr. Louis Capron of West Palm Beach.
He brought, as a gift to the Andrews, one of the old copies of the Jonathan
Dickinson Journal. When Dr. and Mrs. Andrews learned that they were
indeed living on the very site of Dickinson's captivity, they became
completely fascinated and engrossed in the Journal. The next seven years
were spent in exhaustive research, editing and preparing the Dickinson
Journal which was published in 1945 by Mrs. Andrews who shared in the
labor, and of course by Yale University Press. Dr. Andrews, alas, did not

The John DuBois Family of Jupiter 17

live to see this, his last book, in print. He left his legacy to Florida and
Jupiter Inlet, a record of the aboriginal Indians of this lower coast of
Florida, their customs and appearance. He researched that memorable
journey with all the skill of a dedicated historian. Due to this book, the
nearby state park has been named Jonathan Dickinson Park."'0
Dr. and Mrs. Andrews returned to Jupiter each winter through 1941,
after which travel problems attendant to World War II made the trip
impossible. The DuBois' remember them as people of charm and cul-
ture, and wealth they always brought their own chauffeur and house-
keeper. They also entertained many famous and interesting visitors, such
as the noted historian Samuel Eliot Morison of Harvard. The Andrews
also spent a large sum of money in refurbishing the home on the shell
mound, especially by having the fireplaces constructed with native stone
provided by John DuBois. On George Washington's Birthday, which was
also his own, Dr. Andrews hosted a birthday party replete with cake and
balloons for the children of the DuBois family. Although Dr. Andrews
passed away in 1943, his wife remained in touch with the DuBois until her
death and their children still occasionally visit Jupiter.
The era of World War II brought dramatic changes to the Jupiter
area which found itself in the middle of the war effort. In one sense the
military build-up provided employment opportunities for local people,
but there was also overcrowding, food and gasoline shortages, as well as
blackout regulations to contend with. Over 10,000 army personnel were
brought into Camp Murphy, a few miles north of Jupiter, while the Coast
Guard Station at Jupiter Lighthouse was expanded and fortified as a
radar/communications center. Due to the disruption of his normal occu-
pation, John was employed by the civil engineering department at Camp
Murphy for five years; for the first time in his life he had to apply for a
social security card in order to work for someone else.
Through the early years of the war the conflict was brought home
with dramatic impact as German U-Boats were sinking allied shipping
within sight of Jupiter Inlet. During a two-day span in 1942, two tankers
were torpedoed and the community was involved in rescue operations.
On February 21, the petroleum tanker Republic traveling in ballast, went
down off Hobe Sound with a loss of five lives. The explosions rocked the
shore-front community breaking windows and china, but the residents
aided the captain and surviving crewmen ashore. The following day, the
fully loaded tanker W.D. Anderson went up in a sheet of flame seven
miles off the inlet. Thirty-five crew members perished in the sinking of
the largest ship to be lost along that stretch of the Florida coast.
During the remainder of 1942 another six ships would go down in

18 TEQUESTA

the vicinity of Jupiter Inlet, and there seemed to be little that could be
done to prevent the attacks. As Bessie DuBois later described the
situation, "After the first ships were torpedoed, persons driving along the
ocean highway sometimes reported sighting submarines on the surface.
Excited telephone calls to Morrison Field in West Palm Beach had to be
relayed to Washington. By the time permission had been granted to send
a plane, the submarine would have submerged. At first the planes were
not equipped to sink submarines, and there was little they could do.
Pleasure yachts patrolled the ship lanes rescuing survivors of the tor-
pedoed vessels. One captain boasted that he would ram a submarine if the
opportunity offered, but when one day a 200-foot submarine arose before
him, he became completely unnerved. Many deeds of heroism were
performed by these volunteers. At first our peacetime navy was fighting
battles on every front, and for a time it seemed the Nazis had things their
own way. But presently the tide turned, and blimps sailed slowly over the
clear water tracking the submarines below. One submarine crew was
captured and landed at Jupiter Inlet, where a Marine guard put them
aboard a train for a Kentucky prisoner-of-war camp."21 By 1943, the
development of convoy tactics had virtually eliminated U-boat attacks
close to the Florida coast and the war moved away from the Jupiter
Inlet.22 The DuBois' remember standing on the porch of the house on the
shell mound near the war's end and seeing the lines of ghostly gray ships
of the convoys stretching away to the horizon.
One happier result of the war years was that a young Marine
stationed at the Jupiter Lighthouse facility, Charles Kindt, fell in love
with the oldest DuBois daughter, Susan. The two were married following
his discharge from the military in 1946. The Kindts maintain a home next
to her parents, and one of their sons operates the marina facility adjacent
to DuBois Park. In fact, there is what amounts to a DuBois family
compound on the west side of DuBois Road which forms the entrance to
the park. The marina site is in that portion of the original Harry DuBois
purchase which was not included in the park proper.
With the end of the war, a normalcy returned to the Jupiter region -
with the obvious exception that the population was growing; many
former G.I.'s who had been stationed there returned to settle in an equable
climate. The DuBois fishing camp benefited from this population growth
in Palm Beach County. An accomplished handyman, John soon ex-
panded the operation into a private recreational park and beach facility,
adding covered picnic, pavilions and bath facilities along the shoreline to
the east of the bait house and marina. It soon became one of the most

The John DuBois Family of Jupiter 19

popular spots in the north end of the county for young and old alike. John
also enjoyed a reputation for having the best recipe for smoked fish, and
drew customers from miles around. He was a master with a casting net,
and improvised special fish smokers fashioned from discarded re-
frigerator boxes. He was an ultimate entrepenuer, and dabbled in all sorts
of money-making ventures as had his father before him although none
produced any great wealth until the land was sold.
Despite his business ventures John maintained his association with
many colorful local characters, such as the reclusive "Trapper Nelson"
who maintained a camp up the Loxahatchee River. Nelson was a rugged
individualist who survived pretty much off the land, maintained a small
zoo for visitors and occasionally sold some animal furs he had trapped.
When the "Trapper" died under mysterious circumstances in 1968, it was
John DuBois who discovered his body at the camp, so to this day he still
questions the official verdict that the death was a suicide. The case still
holds a fascination for the local press which periodically recounts the
"Trapper Nelson" story, embellishing it with an aura of mystery.
By the 1950's the DuBois children had all completed school,
married, and moved away to pursue their own lives. This left Bessie
DuBois with an opportunity to return to one of her old loves: The
gathering and writing of local history. Since her childhood she had doted
on tales of the Jupiter Inlet region and the people who settled there over
the centuries. Being married into one of the pioneer families had only
heightened this interest. Therefore it must have been a disappointment
when, in 1946, the old DuBois home on the shell mound was sold to the
Leo Vickers family of Ocean City, N.J.23 Susan Sanders DuBois had
vacated the house in 1925, the year following her husband's death, and
moved to West Palm Beach to be with her aged father; she would remain
there until her own death in 1977 at 101 years of age. After her departure
the home was leased to a succession of tenants, many of whom occupied
it seasonally. John and Bessie maintained the property and forwarded the
rental monies to his mother, but they were never in a financial position to
make a bid on the house nor had they really considered that it could
possibly pass out of the family. For still unexplained reasons Mrs. DuBois
decided to sell the house and a limited right-of-way to the Vickers family,
while John purchased the remainder of the property.
When Palm Beach county passed a $50 million bond issue for the
purchase of waterfront park lands in 1970, it was necessary to acquire
both Vickers and DuBois holdings to form a county park. For a long
period of time before the county provided a live-in caretaker the house

20 TEQUESTA

remained unoccupied and was vandalized extensively, but through the
efforts of the Loxahatchee Historical Society it has been restored and is
now open to the public on weekends. In 1979, the shell mound site was
nominated to be placed on the National Register of Historical Places
based upon historical documentation provided by Bessie DuBois and the
local historical society24 This may have been her most significant act in
the preservation of local history, although she was equally active in
having the Jupiter Lighthouse placed on the National Register. As an
officer of both the Palm Beach Historical Society and a Director of the
Florida Historical Society, she came to know and work with most of the
leading historians and preservationists in Florida. Her own specific
contributions to the literature on Florida are found in two booklets:
Shipwrecks in the Vicinity of Jupiter Inlet (1975), and A History of Juno
Beach and Juno Florida (1978), both privately published. In addition, she
had four articles appear in Tequesta, the annual journal of the Historical
Association of Southern Florida. These were "Jupiter Lighthouse"
(1960), "The Wreck of the Victor" (1963), "Jupiter Inlet" (1968), and
"Two South Florida Lighthouse Keepers" (1963). The Florida
Anthropologist carried her report "Celt and Pendant from Jupiter Inlet
Mound" in 1957, and a mimeographed study "Early Martin County Post
Offices" was issued in 1962. A brief series of historical sketches were
carried in Gateway The Magazine of the Port of Palm Beach (1978-80).
Her publications were supplemented by innumerable speeches to civic
clubs, school groups, and various local historical societies throughout
south Florida. By their own estimate, John and Bessie had given their
slide presentation over 125 times, until declining health forced them to
curtail that activity. Nevertheless, both remain loyal attenders at the
annual meetings of the Florida Historical Society. By the late 1970's
Bessie DuBois was acknowledged as one of the most significant non-
professional historians active in South Florida.
John and Bessie DuBois now live quietly at their home across from
the park and are frequently visited by students and reporters seeking
information on the history of the Jupiter Inlet. Indeed, their Florida room
is a veritable museum of artifacts covering a broad cross-section of the
region's history. The family has been the subject of numerous newspaper
accounts, and was recently featured in an interview broadcast on Channel
2 public television in Miami. Although hampered by failing eyesight,
Bessie Wilson DuBois is busily collecting information for her latest work
- a history of the pioneers who settled on the Loxahatchee River. John, a
spry octogenarian, is active in the efforts of the Loxahatchee Historical

The John DuBois Family of Jupiter 21

1 .i

-&
pr
I'-^-r-^f

Bessie and John DuBois at their home on DuBois Road, Jupiter.

Society to secure a suitable historical museum for the Jupiter area,
preferably in DuBois Park. Such a facility, he believes, would provide an
appropriate setting which would induce other pioneer families to donate
their collections for public display. Despite the numerous political and
financial obstacles which stand in the way of this goal, the DuBois' agree
that the Jupiter area is unique and deserving of its own historical identity.
"They don't realize, though" Bessie argues, "that Palm Beach County
History begins right here.... What was here in 1853, 1860? In 1870 there
were two settlers down on Lake Worth.... Even a lot of the older families
in this county like the Spencers and the Pierces, a number of those people
began as assistant keepers over at the lighthouse. They got a good chance
to look around from the top of the lighthouse, and they eventually took up
homesteads and became pioneer residents of the county.' 25
The history of Palm Beach County and southeast Florida is richer
today because young Harry DuBois, too, ascended the lighthouse, shared
that vision, and chose to remain forever on the Loxahatchee.

22 TEQUESTA

NOTES
1. The greatest part of this article is based on a set of oral history interviews conducted with
Mr. and Mrs. John R. DuBois at their home in Jupiter, Florida. The dates of the taped interviews were
July 18, August 15, and September 12, 1980. These interviews were supplemented by access to the
DuBois family papers and photograph collection.
2. Jonathan Dickinson's Journal, God's Protective Providence, Being the Narrative of a
Journey from Port Royal in Jamaica to Philadelphia between August 23, 1696 and April 1, 1697, eds.
Evangeline Walker Andrews and Charles McLean Andrews (New Haven, 1961), pp. 10-17, Map 1.
Charles M. Andrews, "The Florida Indians in the Seventeenth Century," Tequesta, III (1943), 39-41.
3. Harry DuBois to Anna D. and John DuBois, 17 November, 4,11, 18 December 1887; 8, 22,
29 January, 5, 9,10,19, 26 February, 4,11 March 1888, DuBois Family Papers, Jupiter, Florida. These
letters provide significant insights into the Florida citrus industry during the 1880's, and were
utilized by Dr. Jerry Weeks in his paper "Eldorado, Indian River Style" presented to the Florida
Historical Society on May 11, 1973, at Port St. Lucie, Florida.
4. Nathan D. Shappee, "The Celestial Railroad to Juno," The Florida Historical Quarterly
XXX (April, 1962), 329-49. Bessie Wilson DuBois, "The Celestial Railroad," Gateway, The
Magazine of the Port of Palm Beach, Vol. 2., No. 4. (May/June, 1977), 10-11, 22.
5. Dora Doster Utz, "Life on the Loxahatchee," Tequesta, XXXLI (1977), 47-50.
6. Bessie Wilson DuBois, Shipwrecks in the Vicinity ofJupiterinlet (Privately printed, 1975),
11-12. Bessie Wilson DuBois, "Jupiter Inlet," Tequesta, XXVIII (1968), 29-30.
7. Mary Collar Linehan, Early Lantana, Her Neighbors, and More (St. Petersburg, 1980),
25. George E. Pozzetta and Harry A. Kersey, Jr., "Yamato Colony: A Japanese Presence in South
Florida," Tequesta, XXXVI (1976), 68-70.
8. Susan Sanders DuBois, "Pioneer Teacher Tells of Hardships in Early Days at 'Leesville',
Here," The Stuart News, January 9, 1964, 51J
9. Alfred G. Bradbury and E. Story Hallock, A Chronology of Florida Post Offices (Florida
Federation of Stamp Clubs, (1962), 18.
10. History of Martin County, comp. Janet Hutchinson, ed. Emeline K. Paige (Martin
County Historical Society, 1975), p. 178. Bessie Wilson DuBois, "Children Went to School on the
Jungle Waterways in the Early Days; No Roads and No School Buses," The Stuart News, January 9,
1964, 1 J.
11. Bessie Wilson DuBois, "Celt and Pendant from Jupiter Inlet Mound," The Florida
Anthropologist, X (November, 1957), 15-16.
12. DuBois, "Jupiter Inlet," 20-21.
13. DuBois, Shipwrecks, 16-17.
14. Newspaper clipping headlined "Jupiter News," no name, no date. DuBois Family
Clipping Book, Jupiter, Florida.
15. The Seminole trading pattern at Kitching's store in Stuart and Bowers' store in Jupiter is
detailed in Harry A. Kersey, Jr.. Pelts, Plumes and Hides: White Traders Among the Seminole
Indians, 1870-1930 (Gainesville, 1975), 87-96.
16. DuBois, "Jupiter Inlet," 32.
17. Hix C. Stuart, The Notorious Ashley Gang (Privately printed, 1928).
18. DuBois, "Jupiter Inlet," 20.
19. Ibid., 34.
20. Ibid., 24.
21. DuBois, Shipwrecks, 26.
22. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford Histor' of the American People (New York, 1965),
1004-06, 1019-20.
23. DuBois, "Celt and Pendant," 15.
24. Jupiter Inlet Midden I site is not currently listed on the National Register of Historic
Places. The nomination was approved by the Florida Review Committee in 1979, and forwarded to
the keeper of the National Register. After a time the nomination was returned with a request for
further information. The Florida Division of Archives, History and Records Management is the state
agency which must research the matter further and resubmit the nomination. At the time of this
writing (1981) the National Register program is temporarily closed. Thus, the historic marker placed
in DuBois Park which notes that the midden site is listed on the National Register was placed there
prematurely For further information see: Carl McMurray to John Dance, March 3, 1981.
25. Interview with Mr. and Mrs. John DuBois, Jupiter, Florida, September 12, 1980.

The Seminole Women of Florida

By Mary Barr Munroe

Introduction

By Arva Moore Parks*

Mary Barr Munroe was one of the most interesting and influential
women in Miami's early days. She and her husband, Kirk Munroe,
renowned author of boys books, moved to Coconut Grove in 1886 where
she continued to live until her death in 1922.
Mary Barr Munroe was the daughter of Amelia Barr, who was a
famous and prolific writer of romantic novels. Mrs. Barr who penned
eighty-eight books, undoubtedly influenced her oldest child's develop-
ment into an independent and outspoken woman. Feisty and fearless,
Mary Barr Munroe was never neutral. She cared deeply about many
things and once a supporter never waivered in her zeal to convince others
to her point of view.
She worked tirelessly to protect the environment. In 1915 she
founded the first local chapter of the National Audubon Society in
Coconut Grove and became its first president. She helped lead the fight
to protect plume birds and went so far as to snatch egret plumes from
women's hats and lecture the startled women on what a whim of fashion
was doing to the birds of the Everglades. In 1916 she was one of the
leaders of a group of women who led the effort by the Florida Federation

*Arva Moore Parks, associate editor of Tequesta, is currently working on a
biography of Mary Barr Monroe.

24 TEQUESTA

of Women's Clubs to create Royal Palm Park (the first effort to preserve
the Everglades).
Mary Barr Munroe also worked diligently to better her community.
As a charter member of the Housekeepers Club of Coconut Grove
(founded 1891) she was responsible for many important civic projects.
She founded the Pine Needles Club for young girls in the community and
along with her husband, helped them to establish the first public library
in the Miami area.
Kirk and Mary Barr Munroe had a warm, close marriage. She
shared his enthusiasm for the outdoors and frequently accompanied him
on his trips into the wilderness and around the world. Although she too
had writing talents and published many articles under her own name, her
chief occupation was as a helpmate to her husband. Although the
Munroes never had any children of their own, they were favorites of local
children. Every Sunday all the children from the Coconut Grove black
community came to their house for storytelling and ice cream. Often she
cared for black children while their mothers worked.
The following article is taken from a handwritten manuscript found
in the Library of Congress. It is part of a larger work she was probably
preparing for publication. Her first hand contact with what Kirk Munroe
called "The Forgotten Remnant" gives us a warm and personal view of
the Seminole culture. This manuscript, along with forty years of her
diaries not only illuminates the late 19th and early 20th Centuries but also
reveals the personality of an extraordinary woman a woman ahead of
her time.

The Seminole Women of Florida

By Mary Barr Monroe

The name Seminole means wanderer or runaway and that explains what
they were, although they call themselves "the red men of the peninsula or
Long Land." Their history really begins with their separation from the
Creeks of Georgia in 1750. When they came to Florida and were joined
by other runaways, or wanderers from various tribes, principally the
Miccoosoocus, Creek and Tallahassees, they formed a confederacy of
Florida. Today there are the Tallahassee, the Big Cypress, the
Okeechobee and the Miami bands all known as Seminoles. Living in
groups apart, each independent of the other but on friendly relations and
with family connections.

The Seminole Women of Florida 25

The Miami band is the one I know most about, and except for a few
tribal differences, principally in form of speech the result of having
descended from various tribes the bands are all alike in customs.
The Miami Indians of today are the descendants of some half dozen
families who escaped to the Everglades at the end of the last Seminole
War. At that time, 4,420 Indians were sent out west (370 in one party)
and are said to have done better than any other tribe there.
Those refusing to go made a treaty with General Worth to remain
South of the Caloosahatchee River. The Miami band is part of those who
accepted General Worth's treaty, although their ancestors had at the time
escaped to the vast untrodden wilderness of the Everglades and had
become in a way a "Forgotten Remnant." They have led an almost ideal
life of back to nature until civilization in the form of railroads and land
agents took possession of the Long Land.
Some thirty years ago it was estimated that there were about 700 all
told. Today there are certainly many less. Whiskey and sickness playing
sad havoc among their ranks. Also, their food supply is greatly di-
minished; the deer is scarce.
Much of the land where they gathered coontie roots is now under
cultivation and set in orange groves (not theirs, of course). The fields
where they raised corn and potatoes and pumpkins have been home-
steaded by the white man and the Indians told to move on. Alligator
hides, once a great source of income to them, are no longer fashionable
and the white plume hunters had almost monopolized that work even
before the law forbid the killing of plume birds.
These Indians have kept their bond with General Worth and have
troubled no one -taking care of themselves and living an honest peaceful
life with a form of government that recognizes the rights of women,
honors old age and family ties. Up to within very recent years there have
been no white half-breeds among them and black blood is but one of the
gens. As far as is known there is only one black slave, a woman belonging
to the Tallahassee group.
Of course a great deal that we know about the Seminoles has been
gathered bit by bit and from many sources for very few white men have
ever really been in their home places. What may be perfectly correct
about the Tallahassee group may not tally with something someone
knows of the Big Cypress camps or the Miami band.
The gens of the tribe or confederacy are the Tiger, the Wolf, the
Wind, the Bird, the Snake and the Otter. The Alligator gen, a large and
powerful one, went at the end of the war to the western reservation and
are among the most successful tribes there.

26 TEQUESTA

Geneology is traced through the mother, the children belong to her
and to the gen or clan she represents. The mother rules the household and
where there is more than one squaw, it is the old one whose word is law.
The older squaws do all they can to protect the young prospective
mothers. The children are taught strict obedience and respect for parents,
and for the aged people of the camp.
Two women once spent the morning with me: both had children and
although one saw the other's little one destroying some flowers that she
had corrected her own for touching a few moments before, not one word
would she say to either the children or their mother, who happened to be
attending to a cut foot, (as they wear no shoes and had walked many miles
that morning). The men would have interfered, but not the women.
I have seen the most perfect delight in a mother at any praise
bestowed on her baby, change at once into dignified resentment at the
mention of herself or anything she had on. They dislike to be touched,
and they never touch anything without permission, but would point to it.
When a squaw is too old to work she is taken care of first by one
camp for so long a time and then by another irrespective of family ties
and she is provided with every comfort possible. This is the case also
with men. I remember seeing "Old Alec" when he was said to be over a
hundred years old and no human being could have been better cared for. I
also saw the signal smoke announcing his death to the various bands.
It is only a few years ago since "Big Charlie" and his family
camped on our front lawn. They were on their way to the Big Hunting
Ground, now called Cutler, and stopped for the night to deliver some deer
skins Mr. Munroe had ordered from Charlie's squaw the year before. I
watched them make camp. Big Charlie and his eldest son cut the wood
for the fire and pumped the water and carried some of the outfit up from
the wharf where their canoes were. Then Big Charlie took the baby from
its mother's arm and crooned to it as he walked back and forth while she
cooked supper. After supper they all came into the house to spend the
evening during which Big Charlie discovered among other curious things
decorating our sitting room wall a long bladed knife of some western
tribe. Taking it from its rattlesnake sheath he stepped into the middle of
the room and delivered a speech or recited some tradition of the tribe that
kept us spellbound for nearly half an hour, although we understood not a
word of what he was saying. Suddenly, he stopped, his squaw giving a
sign as he returned the knife to its sheath, and turning to me, he said
"Thank You."
His squaw surrounded by her children listening to him made a

The Seminole Women of Florida 27

picture never to be forgotten. I noticed the next morning that the squaw
carried away a small piece of one of the burnt logs of their campfire of the
evening before.
The boy who helped his father cut the wood and carry things was
killed in Miami in 1907, by the train and was the first of the Miami
Indians to receive white man's burial. His father, when talking of him,
spoke with the greatest pride and tenderness of his "good boy."
A brave may not marry in his gen but he may have as many wives as
he can provide for. An old settler tells the story of Big Head Tiger. "I
found Big Head Tiger talking to a pretty young Indian girl. I asked Young
Tiger what it meant and he answered, 'Big Head Tiger want to catch
young squaw.'"
"Who's squaw is that?" I said, pointing to a woman standing near.
"Big Head Tiger's old squaw, not like it."
There stood a pathetic group in bronze the maiden and man and
the unwilling old woman. It is needless to say that Big Head Tiger got the
young squaw.
Old Jumper, one of the war chiefs, told me that he had "old squaw,
half-old squaw and young squaw." But there is no intermarrying. The
young people must be of different gens or families. Last summer one of
the Big Cypress men seduced a near relative. When it became known a
council was held and he was ordered shot after the green corn festival.
There are two other important cases but the men in both instances were
white. In the first the squaws of the women's gen killed both mother and
child. In the second, which happened only a few years ago, the squaws of
the gen pulled out every hair of the girl's head, thereby disgracing her for
life. They threw the poor little half-breed baby into the palmettos for the
buzzards to eat. A white woman living near Fort Myers told me that this
squaw whom she knew, was allowed by the gen to marry again and that
she now has two children but that she is the most unhappy looking
creature. Perhaps the cry of her baby still haunts her and it was not her
fault.
The domestic life of these people of the Everglades is a very busy,
happy one. Their permanent or established homes are (or have been) on
the keys or islands in the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp where
there are several villages, and the very few white people who have seen
them say they are well kept according to the Indian's means. The women
pride themselves on their cooking and are just as much slaves to wash day
as their white sisters.
Four or six families form a camp under one head as for instance

28 TEQUESTA

"Jimmie Doctor's Camp," "Tom Tiger's Camp," or "Miami Billy's
Camp." Each family in the camp has its own palmetto thatched hut
although some of them are now shingled. The floor is always raised some
two or three feet above the ground and covered with deer skins. Three
sides of the hut are left open for light and air but provided with canvas or
bagging curtains to keep out the wind and rain. Once a day in their
permanent homes every member of the camp indulges in a bath in the
pool which is always to be found in their Everglades established homes.
Meals are served as a rule at regular hours and the members of the
camp are sometimes called to dinner by ringing of the camp bell. But the
sofkie pot is always full and ready for the belated ones. The men are
served first then the women and children and then the dogs. One of the
best stews I ever tasted I got in Cypress Tiger's Camp made by his young
squaw. It was Indian sofkie and was made of sweet potatoes, venison,
onions, rice and I do not know what else seasoned to a turn. I was
enthusiastic enough then to follow Indian custom in eating it, so I did not
hurt my Seminole hostess' feelings although she insisted on my eating
when my husband did. In another camp we were served with little cakes
made of coontie root and mashed sweet potatoes fried to a turn. No white
housekeeper could have shown more anxiety to please or have been more
pleased than Miami Billy's squaw was at our appreciation of her sweet
potato biscuit.
I have a corn sifter made of seeds which was bought from the squaw
who was using it when we reached her camp, and who very reluctantly let
me have it in exchange for two dollars and a new wire one that I had
provided myself with as a possible gift. The corn is broken first by
pounding and then sifted for either flour or grits.
Once on a visit to Miami Billy's Camp-as proud a young Indian as
ever wore a turban we found him busy doing work which he knew was
his squaw's. He did not stop, or seem the least embarrassed. "My squaw
sick," was his courteous explanation.
Some years ago a little girl said to me when she heard I was coming
to Florida and would see Indians, "Won't you be afraid of squaws and
Indian chiefs?"
"Why?" I asked.
She answered, "They are so wild."
But I said, "Would you be afraid of a little Indian girl?"
She thought a moment and said, "No, I would talk to her."
Remembering my little friend's advice I talked to the first squaw I
saw as hard and fast as I knew how and although she listened to me most
attentively, I never got one word from her in reply.

The Seminole Women of Florida 29

A year later I met her again in her own home on the bank of the
Miami and found out that she had never seen but two white women
before. I was a curiosity. The first time we visited the camp where this
squaw was, every woman and child disappeared into the bushes. That was
many years ago. The squaw was a handsome woman with the most
musical voice and really fine manners. She was killed while trying to
protect her husband from the attack of a crazed Negro by putting herself
in front of her chief and receiving the stab that was intended for him. I
have a basket that she made for me and a silver ornament she sent too.
"My squaw, your squaw, no money" The words came in clear
silvery tones and glancing through my open window to the far corner of
the piazza I saw that the speaker was a tall and fine looking young
Seminole brave who was in the act of handing to my husband a silver
ornament of the kind I had seen the Seminole Indian women wearing. I
knew better than to appear upon the scene as much as I wanted to, until
I was called. That would not have been Indian etiquette, besides which I
was enjoying the picture that these two Americans were making for me as
they stood exchanging courtesies in the blaze of the afternoon sun as it
sifted through the branches of the pomegranate and guava trees near by.
Both tall, straight and fine looking, the Indian wearing a costume that
would have rivaled the most brilliant of tropical sunsets in fine contrast to
the white clothes of the other American.
In a few moments I was called as I knew I should be to receive the
gift that my squaw friend had sent me in return, I suppose, for a lot of
odds and ends from my work basket that I had given her a few weeks
before.
The young chief smiled at my very clumsy attempt to fasten the
trinket to my waist and finally offered to show me how but waited for my
permission to do so. I do not wear the gift everyday but I always try to
appear with it when any of our Indian friends visit us, and it always
commands attention, especially from the women and some of them can
tell me who sent it to me.
I heard a pathetic story the other day of a squaw who had allowed
her baby to be photographed by a young woman at whose home the
squaw had often visited on the way from the camp to Miami. The baby
died last summer and the girl who took the picture offered it to the mother
to keep. But she would not take it but instead makes special trips to look
at it long and lovingly.
The women are treated unusually well. They work, it is true, but
they are always considered and in many cases dearly loved. The young
Indian boy who was sent a few years ago from Florida to the Indian

30 TEQUESTA

school at Carlisle gave his chief excuse for deserting and coming back-
his great longing to see his mother and sister. These red men have a great
affection for their sisters and have been known to really sacrifice a good
deal for them. They are proud of them and never lose a care for them. One
handsome young Seminole drew my attention to his sister, a girl of
sixteen with fine eyes by saying "Heap pretty, my sister."
Perhaps as good an illustration of what's mine is my own in
connection with each one's possessions was told to me by a friend who
was present. An Indian called at a wayside cottage and asked for dinner
which he wished to pay for. The mistress of the house asked him where
his squaw was and if she was not coming for her dinner. "No," he
answered, "my squaw, no money, no eat get camp." He had fifty cents for
his dinner but she had spent all of her money in town and was waiting
patiently by the roadside until he was ready to continue their journey. It is
needless to say that a plateful of dinner was furnished by the white
woman for the squaw in spite of her saying, "No money, no got."
The money a squaw makes by tanning deer skins, raising vegeta-
bles or chickens to sell is her own and she may do as she pleases with it. I
have been told by the merchants of Miami that the squaws are far more
prudent in how they spend their money than the men.
The squaw's principal bit of household pride is the wooden sofkie
spoon and each gen has a different shaped spoon. Some have a long
bowl, some a short round one, and often the handles are carved. It is used
not only to stir the sofkie stew while it is cooking but to eat it with. Each
member of the family taking his or her turn. Etiquette demands that only
one helping be taken at a time and then the spoon is passed to the next on
the right. Many of the spoons now used are manufactured ones coming
from Connecticut but the real Indian sofkie spoon is made of guava
wood.
Not long since I saw two squaws cooking over an out of door fire
and they were very much amused at me for wanting to know what was in
the pots they were watching so carefully. One pot was covered with a
large cabbage leaf and when I asked what was in the pot the older woman
lifted the cover and showed me green bananas steaming.
At the death of a husband, the wife pulls her hair over her face and
wears it in that way for a year. At the death of a squaw the husband can not
hunt for four days and removes his neck hankerchief and his turban for
four moons.
"Co-na-waw?" the question came in a soft musical voice as a small
brown hand almost but not quite touched the string of beads about my

The Seminole Women of Florida 31

neck. The speaker was a Seminole Indian squaw who had been attracted
by the bright red and gold string beads which I wore. They were nothing
more or less than a native wild bush bean strung with gold glass beads
that I had persuaded a black woman from the Bahamas to give me in
exchange for a blue and white gingham dress. I took them from my neck
and put them about the squaw's. They were long enough to hang outside
of the yards and yards of glass beads that she wore. She never for a
moment doubted but that I meant she should keep them as I did. She told
me she was young Tigertail's squaw. I had once seen her in her
Everglades home and while I had forgotten or did not know her, she
remembered me.
"Okeechobee squaw?" she asked, that being the name given to my
husband by his Indian friends.
We exchanged courtesies and then picking up the package of cloth
she had been purchasing, for we had met in one of the department stores
of Miami, she said, "Hie-pus," (1 go), and was gone.
Why she coveted the beads was a question, for she owned and wore
more beads -glass beads of many colors than I had ever seen at one time.
I afterwards learned that "Ma-ki," for that was her name, had 200 strings
that filled, when taken off, a six quart measure and these she wore most
of the time.
"Heap beads, heap good squaw," so they say. So we know a
Seminole woman's standing by her beads. They are in a way to her what a
wedding ring is to the white woman. The primitive standard of value
among the Seminoles is suggested by their word for money- "Teat-to-
co-na-wa." "Conawa" means beads, and "teato," while it is the word for
iron and metal, is also the name for stone. So teat-to-co-na-wa means
stone beads and they were the primitive money
Varnassi Jimmy had one string 80 yards long that weighed nearly
twenty-five pounds. The women care much more for beads than the silver
ornaments fashioned from silver 25 cent pieces and half dollars. There is
also a fashion in the beads worn. One year they will be a majority of
green and another blue but they must be of good quality and matched as
to size and shape.
At the death of a squaw her beads are buried with her but her silver
ornaments belong to her family When a squaw passes middle life she
begins taking off her beads and by the time she reaches very old age and
has to be cared for she wears but one string made of the life beads, and
this is buried with her. But the old squaws are of late years imitating their
white sisters in demonstrating that there is no old age. I saw not long ago

32 TEQUESTA

a very old squaw with many strings that must have weighed pounds but
she was not helpless therefore not old.
They do not wear all their beads at home but never appear without
some. When a baby girl is a year old she is given a string of beads -
among which is the life beads of a different color from the rest- usually
white. Every year a string is added until the girl is going to be married
then she takes off all but six strings and the discarded beads are put into a
jar and buried all but the life beads which have been taken from the
strings. They believe that if the beads are scattered the girl will be ill and
have no children.
Once when "Snake Creek Charlie" and his squaw came to Coconut
Grove they were invited to see a two-day-old white baby and were told
that it was a little girl. The squaw took from her neck a string of beads and
presented it to the mother, this being the greatest mark of respect she
could possibly show-as every Indian mother is allowed an extra string at
the birth of a child.
I have in my possession a baby's first string showing the life bead
and one of the the last strings worn by an old squaw who took them off
when she found the "long sleep" overtaking her. The Indian left them
believing she would come for them and I expect their disappearance
confirmed the belief. There must be something about a dead woman's
beads that they fear or respect for no squaw will touch them. Perhaps the
life beads have something to do with the feeling.
The string I have is very old and shows years and years of wear. The
beads are also old fashioned. It used to be that large beads were the ones
mostly desired but I have noticed on several squaws lately that strings of
small beads are worn on top of the large ones. Anyway, as long as the
Seminole squaw owns and wears "Co-na-wa" she will be "Heap good
squaw."
The Seminole women of today are far more responsible for the
good or evil in the tribe than ever and it will be through them that the
government and church must reach the tribe. They are always taken into
the council meetings and their advice is respected if not obeyed. A few
years ago a young man stepped beyond the Seminole law and went to live
with a white family. He was repeatedly warned to return. At length when
all else failed to bring him back, he was promised the daughter of Charlie
Osceola for a wife. No Indian girl in all the nation could boast of the
beauty of "Nan-ces-a-wee" and who could refuse such a prize. He
returned and is happy today in his forest home with the "Belle of the
Nation," who is also noted for her wisdom.

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida,

1822-1840

Part II: Fitzpatrick's Miami River Plantation

By Hugo L. Black III*

During the 1820's, most of the land in southeast Florida was owned by the
government. By 1825, only six private claims from the Spanish period
had been validated: the Polly Lewis, Jonathan Lewis, and Rebecca
Hagan (Egan) Donations on the South side of the Miami River, the James
Hagan (Egan) Donation on the North side of the Miami River, the Mary
Ann Davis Donation on Key Biscayne, and the Frankee Lewis Donation
on the New River.'
Notwithstanding the lack of settlement, even during this period,
southeast Florida's suitability for plantations was recognized. James
Egan emphasized this suitability in the following advertisement run on
numerous occasions in the Key Wst Register during 1829, in which he
offered his land on the Miami River for Sale:
For Sale
A Valuable Tract of
LAND
Near Cape Florida
Situated on the Miami River. The Land is very good and will produce Sugar
Cane and Sea Island Cotton, equal if not superior to any other part of the

*Hugo Black, III, is a resident of Miami, a former state legislator, a graduate of
Yale, and presently attending law school at Stanford University This is the second part
of an article written as a senior paper at Yale. For Part I see Tequesta, XL.

34 TEQUESTA

Territory. There is at present a number of bearing Banana and Lime trees
and the fruit is inferior to none raised in the Island of Cuba. The forest
growth consists principally of Live Oak, Red Bay and Dog Wood.
Any person desirous of purchasing a valuable plantation will do well
to visit the Land.2

On December 1, 1830, Fitzpatrick took James Egan up on his offer,
paying $400.00 for "640 acres more or less" on "the Sweet water or
Miami River."3 Fitzpatrick continued to buy land in the area, and by
April 21, 1835, he had acquired the title to every inch of privately held
land in southeast Florida except for the previously mentioned Mary Ann
Davis Donation on Key Biscayne.4 Fitzpatrick's total purchases
amounted to 2,660 acres on both sides of the Miami River (over four
square miles), and another 640 acres, one square mile, on the New River.
The $2,690.00 he had spent in total averaged out to only 81 cents per
acre, far less than what agricultural property was selling for in the
comparable sugar lands of East Florida. Fitzpatrick not only had ac-
quired good land for a plantation with a minimal capital outlay, he had
also placed himself in a good speculative position. If he could firmly
establish and then make known that the area was fit for plantations, then
he would stand to profit enormously from the appreciation in value of the
land to a price even remotely approaching the price common in East
Florida.
The people who owned the land in southeast Florida before Fitzpat-
rick were yeomen farmers like those who made up so much of the
population of Florida at the time. Although these farmers were not
wealthy and owned few if any slaves, their improvements were by no
means negligible. An investigation of the Lewis family tract on New
River by the Spaniards stated that:
... Mr. Lewis had lived in that house for several years... had a plantation two miles
to the west of this house... [and] had five horses. The house stands on a pine bluff
south of the river- a small fowl house opposite- about 30 yards from the dwelling
house up the river stands a small house which we found to be a blacksmith's shop
with a forge, bellows... [and] a small anvil -a chest with sundry tools in it belongs
to Lewis.5

Dr. Benjamin Strobel visited Cape Florida in 1829 and left another
description of one of these yeomen farmers' properties:
... The point of land to which we steered our course was steep and perpendicular,
consisting of a wall of limestone rock, twelve or fifteen feet above the level of the
water. At one of these we landed, and ascending a rude flight of steps, I found
myself at the door of a new palmetto hut which was seated on the brow of the hill.
It was quite a romantic situation. The cottage was shaded on its western aspect by

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 35

several large West Indian fruit trees, whilst on its eastern side we found a grove of
luxuriant limes, which were bowing to the earth under the weight of their golden
fruit. This was the residence of the old lady to whom I had been recommended and
who was bordering on 80 years of age. I entered the house and made my devoirs.
She received me graciously and placed before me some Palmetto and Icaca plums
and after refreshing, politely conducted me herself over her grounds and showed
me a field of potatoes and corn which she had cultivated. She generally employed
several Indians for this purpose, who for their labor received a portion of the
products.6

In the New River area on Frankee Lewis' Land, William Cooley had
established the most ambitious project in the southeast Florida area.
With the help of two negro slaves, Cooley had since 1825 been farming
and manufacturing arrowroot starch.7 Fitzpatrick apparently rented the
land to Cooley after Fitzpatrick bought the Frankee Lewis tract, for
Cooley continued his operations until the whole area was deserted in
1836. The account of what the Indians had destroyed of Cooley's planta-
tion in 1836 included "20 acres of Land cleared six acres planted in
Sugar Cane two acres of Bermuda Arrow Root the balance of land
planted in corn, potatoes, pumpkins and etc.," as well as citrus fruits and
coconuts. In 1836 the Cooley farm was valued at $12,700, including a
house, 20 x 55 feet, "one story high built of cypress logs sealed and
floored... ", a storehouse full of provisions, including flour, pork, beets,
coffee, corn, grits, rice, salt, sugar, butter and 21 gallons of wine; a
"Machinery House 27 x 14 with all the machinery for making arrow root,
with a wharf attached..."; and livestock which included eighty head of
hogs, five sheep, three horses, and "a lot of Fowls".8
The plantation Fitzpatrick established on his lands on the Miami
River differed from these yeoman farmer's efforts not only in scale, but
also in kind. Fitzpatrick's agricultural effort, like Fitzpatrick himself,
was of a totally different class- not a farm, owned by a yeoman farmer,
but a plantation, owned by a planter. Fitzpatrick's plantation was the
same type of agricultural effort which all over the south was the cor-
nerstone and pinnacle of a distinct economic system, presided over by a
distinct class, the planters. The establishment of Fitzpatrick's plantation
held out the promise of firmly grounding a planter society in South
Florida in the economic system most compatible with that society
Fitzpatrick's agricultural improvements concentrated on sugar
cane. By January of 1836, Fitzpatrick had 100 acres of sugar cane under
cultivation, as well as a wide variety of other crops. He had thirty acres of
corn and pumpkins, five acres of sweet potatoes, four thousand plantain
and banana trees, twelve acres of Bermuda arrow root, "a fine lime

36 TEQUESTA

grove, yielding at that time from three to five hundred barrels of limes per
annum," one hundred coconut trees, and an additional "nursery of
tropical fruit trees." For livestock, Fitzpatrick had one hundred head of
hogs, and ducks, fowl, turkeys, and guinea fowls. The wooded areas of
Fitzpatrick's land were also of value, for Fitzpatrick kept on hand large
quantities of previously cut wood from his plantation with which to
supply fuel for passing steamers.9 The following schedule made to
support his late claim for reimbursement from the U.S. Government for
the occupation of his plantation during the Second Seminole War in-
cluded: everything Fitzpatrick had on the plantation in 1836, each with its
approximate value. Not listed were the "fifty or sixty" slaves Fitzpatrick
had working the plantation.10
One Hundred acres of sugar cane, worth $100 per acre ............. $10,000
Thirty acres of corn and pumpkins, worth .......... ......... 1,200
Five acres of sweet potatoes, worth ............................ 500
Four thousand plantain and banana trees ...................... 4,000
Twelve acres of Bermuda arrow root ........................... 500
Lime grove destroyed ............ ..................... 2,000
One hundred coconut trees destroyed ........................ 500
Nursery of tropical fruit trees destroyed ........................ 2,500
Six hundred bushels of flint corn . . ..................... 1,500
One hundred head of hogs ....................... .... ....... 1,000
Poultry, viz: ducks, fowls, turkeys and guinea fowls ............... 200
One large flat boat, sixty feet long (cost) ...................... 1,300
One clinker-built boat ...... .... ........................ 120
One cedar boat ..................... ............ ......... 60
One schooner ...................... .......... .......... 1,500
One framed house ............ ........... ...... ... .. 2,300
Two corn cribs ..................................... ...... 200
One kitchen ........ .. .... ................ ......... 50
One poultry house . .. ... .............................. 50
One hewed log house ................ .................... 100
Twelve negro houses . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500
One framed house, south side Miami River ..................... 300
One framed house, smaller ......................... ..... .... 100
Two framed houses and out-buildings purchased from Lewis ........ 2,500
Plantation tools, blacksmiths' tools, carts, ploughs, axes, hoes,
grubbing hoes, cooking utensils, etc. and etc .................. 500
Furniture, bed clothes, books, etc ... ................. . . . . 2,000
Three years' occupation of my plantation by the United States
troops at Fort Dallas, Miami River ...................... 18,000
Four thousand shingles .............................. ...... 240
Three hundred cords of wood, cut from my land to the first of April,
1840 for the use of the United States steamers employed on the
coast of Florida, at $6 per cord .................. .......... 1,800
Two hundred cords of wood, cut from my land at New river for the
United States steamboats, at $6 per cord ..................... 1,200
House and improvements, including fruit trees, wharf, etc.
purchased of William Cooley, on Little River ............... . 2,500
$60,320"

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 37

The soil and climate of southeast Florida were remarkably suited
for the growth of tropical products. Speaking in response to an Army
Colonel who had tried to denigrate the productiveness of Fitzpatrick's
land, Stephen R. Mallory wrote about the munificent bounty of the soil
in the southeast Florida area:
... His entire statement relative to the unsuitableness of Fitzpatrick's plantation for
the culture of tropical fruits, is an error. The place and the country around it are
admirably adapted to their culture, and many of them, as the orange, lime, lemon,
sugar apple, coconut, and guava, had been growing there for forty years, when the
troops took possession. He is in error, also, in relation to all that he says about the
culture of the banana and plantain and a market for them. While Fort Dallas was
thus occupied by troops, I with a company of forty men, in seven boats, visited a
banana grove near the Miami, and found the fruit in greatest abundance. We took
as much of it as we could dispose of in our boats, without making much impression
upon the quantity in the grove. He is equally in error in relation to the quantity and
character of the pine timber at the Miami. It is a superior article for steamboats...12

Mallory, who lived on the plantation for a year in 1831 and later became a
U.S. Senator from Florida, described the value of the actual plantation
itself thus:
I am well acquainted with "Fitzpatrick's plantation", in Florida. It occupies both
banks of the beautiful little River Miami, at its mouth, and is known as Cape
Florida. The climate is tropical, and all the fruits of the tropics grow, or will grow
without replanting .... but for the Indian war it would now have been one of the
most beautiful and productive plantations of the south. It is remarkably healthy.
When the war broke out, in 1836, this plantation was in beautiful condition,
worked by some fifty or sixty servants...
Of the value of the plantation in dollars and cents, I do not know. If I owned
it I would not takefifty thousand dollars for it.1

The security of Fitzpatrick's land was reflected in the annual profit
Fitzpatrick was making from the plantation. Fitzpatrick's overseer,
James Wright, testified "that the estimate of six thousand dollars a year
for the use of the plantation is less than the same, with the force employed
on it, would have produced to the owner."14 Such a return on investment
was comparable with the plantations of Middle Florida, where it was not
unusual for cotton planters to average from $5,000 to $15,000 annually.15
We can only speculate about the life Fitzpatrick's slaves led on his
plantation. Most likely, Fitzpatrick's slaves were comparatively better off
in the Winter than they would have been in the colder climates and we do
know that game was abundant in the area surrounding the plantation,
with which the slaves could supplement their diets. On the other hand,
the slaves' opportunities to interact with a broader slave community, such
as by visiting other plantations or through hearing itinerant preachers,
were almost non-existent because of the plantation's isolation.

38 TEQUESTA

The slaves' personal relations with Fitzpatrick were undoubtedly
shaped and mediated by paternalism. While Fitzpatrick was in Tallahas-
see or Key West much of every year, he apparently did spend a great deal
of time on the plantation. Mallory, in speaking of the year he spent on
Fitzpatrick's plantation at Cape Florida, said that "Col. Fitzpatrick, Mr.
Cooley, and family, and a few frontier people were settled there..." and
again, "At the beginning of 1830 I went with Col. Fitzpatrick to New
River, on the coast of Florida to aid him in establishing a plantation... "16
The whole planter ideology grew out of this life of patriarchal planter
whose plantation was as much home as economic enterprise, a home of
which the entire white and black population formed parts of the planter's
extended family. The significance of Fitzpatrick's plantation in South
Florida's history was that its establishment brought the concrete founda-
tion of this paternalistic ideology to South Florida, and held out the
promise that this foundation would be strengthened through the immigra-
tion of other planters who would establish other plantations.
The possibility that other planters would move to South Florida was
a very real one. Fitzpatrick certainly believed in the possibility; it was the
reason he speculated on land in the area. While cotton was the major
plantation product in North Florida during the territorial period, sugar
plantations had begun to appear and prosper in great numbers in East
Florida in the Matanzas, Tomoka, and Musquito areas in the 1830's.'7
Fitzpatrick made efforts to let other planters know about the suitability of
South Florida's land for sugar cane and other crops, trying to include
South Florida in the movement toward sugar cultivation. The following
report Fitzpatrick made to the Legislative Council in 1837 was represen-
tative of his efforts to publicize South Florida among the planters.
...The South of Florida, is now particularly adapted to the culture of the Sugar-
cane, and many of the tropical fruits are produced there as abundantly, and in as
great perfection, as in the West-Indies; the plantain, banana, pineapple, lime,
lemon, and other fruits are there produced, because from latitude 24 degrees frost
is not known, and as far as latitude 29 degrees north, the sugar-cane is cultivated
with the best success. In these latitudes also, the Spanish tabacco not inferior to
that of the Island of Cuba, is produced, and the Vine, Olive, and mulberry trees,
have been upon fair trial, found to flourish there, equal to any other country. It is a
fact not very generally known to the people of this Territory, that they possess a
country of the character herein described, running miles, with the Bahama
Islands, and separated from them by a channel of not more than fifty miles, and
that the Islands between Cape Florida and the Tortugas, are situated and lie to the
south of the largest of the Bahamas, upon all of which the tropical fruits of every
description have been cultivated and have been produced in perfection, nor is it
known generally, that the towns of Key-West and Indian Key lie to the south of
Nassau, in the Island of New Providence, and within twelve hours sail of Havana

RichardFitzpatrick's South Florida 39

and Matanzas in the Island of Cuba, from which that part of our Territory is
separated by the Gulph Stream, not more than ninety miles wide. These facts are
within the knowledge of your committee and they respectfully submit them.'8

Fitzpatrick tried to remove one major obstacle to the settlement of
South Florida by attempting to have South Florida surveyed. He wrote to
Simonton on December 20, 1831:
Dear Sir: Having heard that you intend returning to Washington soon, I have to
request that you will see the Commissioner of the Gen'l. Land office, and
ascertain from him whether or not he has given any direction to the Surveyor
General for the survey of this part of Florida viz. the Tract of Country from Cape
Sable to this place [Cape Florida] and from here to New River. Col. White in a
letter to me last winter mentioned that the order would be given to survey those
Lands. It is really a matter of astonishment to me that such an immensely valuable
tract of Country should have been so long neglected, for besides the great variety
and fertility of the soil it has an advantage of near five degrees of latitude over the
lands in Middle Florida which are so highly esteemed for the culture of Sugar and
Cotton and strange as it may appear it is a fact that there is a very large proportion
of the best lands in the United States within this section aluded to; besides much
more which is adapted to the production of Sugar, Spanish Tobacco and the finer
qualities of Sea Island cotton...19

Fitzpatrick's efforts and South Florida's natural advantages would
certainly have resulted in the immigration of planters into the area had it
not been for the onset of the Seminole War, as the following letter from
Fitzpatrick to government authorities in Washington in August of 1832
indicates. Fitzpatrick told them that South Florida was:
... decidedly the richest land I ever saw and will certainly produce more sugar to
an acre than any land in Florida or Louisiana when properly cultivated; as proof of
which I will take occasion to observe that a few weeks ago a party of gentlemen
from the neighborhood of Tallahassee came to New River and Cape Florida to
examine the land and so well satisfied were they, that they immediately picked out
such places for their plantations and will remove their negroes the ensuing fall.. 20

On December 20, 1835, defying the threat to remove them to the
West, the Seminoles killed Major Francis Dade and more than one
hundred of his men near the Withlacoochee River, and at Fort King killed
General Wiley Thompson and four others. The Seminoles then "moved
south, destroying almost everything of value in their course, burning
every house and destroying every plantation between St. Augustine and
Cape Florida, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles."21 On January 6,
1836, before word of the Dade and Thompson killings had reached South
Florida, the Indians attacked the home of William Cooley at New River,
killing Mrs. Cooley, the three Cooley children, and the children's tutor,
and carried off with them Cooley's two negro slaves and "a Spanish man

40 TEQUESTA

named Emmanuel" who apparently must have been working for
Cooley22
Word of the Indians' attack on the Cooley family reached the Miami
River area quickly. James Wright, Fitzpatrick's overseer, reported:
... that on the 6th day of January, 1836, during the absence of his said employer, the
intelligence reached him about noon, that the Indians had killed the family of Mr.
William Cooley, on New River, and were on their way to the settlement on the
Miami; that deponent [Wright] immediately embarked on board of such boats as
were most convenient, and took with him all the negroes and a number of families
of white persons, and was unable to carry away any of the property of his
employer, nor could he save his own clothing or that of the negroes23

Wright, the rest of the white population of the southeast Florida
mainland, and the slaves, removed to Cape Florida, where soon after-'
ward nearly everyone moved either to Indian Key, Key Vaca or Key West.
After the attack on the Cape Florida Lighthouse in July of 1836 and its
abandonment, the Indians had sole possession of southeast Florida.
Soon after the attack on the lighthouse, however, the U.S. armed forces
moved to establish fortifications in the Miami area. The first was Fort
Bankhead, established by the Navy on Key Biscayne. Sometime in 1836,
the army opened a fort on Fitzpatrick's plantation, calling it Fort Dallas.
Fort Dallas remained in intermittent use throughout the Second Semi-
nole War, preventing Fitzpatrick from using his land even if he had
wished to do so.
The taking of Cooley's slaves by the Indians might well have had an
effect on Fitzpatrick's slaves, for Wright had a great deal of difficulty in
getting Fitzpatrick's slaves to leave the area. At least some of Fitzpat-
rick's slaves apparently realized they were in no danger of losing their
lives at the hands of the Indians, and wished to stay and join up with the
Seminoles. In his deposition about the abandonment of his plantation
Fitzpatrick spoke about Wright's problems with the slaves:
... James Wright, who was in charge of his [Fitzpatrick's] plantation and negroes,
was obliged to abandon the plantation, leaving everything behind him except the
negroes, which by great exertions he removed, and thus prevented them from
falling into the hands of the Indians..2A

John Dubose, the Cape Florida Lighthouse keeper, also referred to the
situation: "Mr. Wright, the overseer of Mr. Fitzpatrick, (with only one
hour's notice) was enabled with difficulty to remove the negroes, with a
small supply of provisions, to the Cape Florida Lighthouse.. "25
The Second Seminole War, which had such a devastating effect on
South Florida's history, was as much open class insurrection as an Indian

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 41

War. General Thomas Jesup, for example, though perhaps stating the
case a bit strongly, wrote on December 9, 1936 [after being appointed
commander of the U.S. Army's Florida war effort] that "This, you may be
assured, is a negro, not an Indian War; and if it be not speedily put down,
the south will feel the effects of it on their slave population before the end
of the next season."26
While we have no evidence as to whether Seminole Negroes were
involved in the attack on the Cooley family, we do know that class
struggle was a major part of the dynamics leading up to the attack.What-
ever effect the Cooley attack and the further events of the Second
Seminole War had on Fitzpatrick the development of South Florida must
be attributed to class struggle as well as white-Indian hostility.

FITZPATRICK AND THE SECOND SEMINOLE WAR
As early as January of 1835, Fitzpatrick was preparing for the
possibility of war in South Florida. A letter he wrote to Richard Call on
January 8, 1935, proved to be a prophetic vision of events that would
occur in South Florida and that would ultimately drive him from Florida.

Sir: Previous to my leaving Key West, information was received from Tampa Bay,
that a Spanish vessel had landed arms and ammunition in the neighborhood of a
Spanish fishery, at Charlotte's harbor, to supply the Indians on the coast. The
surgeon of the post at Key West, Dr. Nourse, accompanied Major Dade's company
to Tampa, and returned in the transport "Molto" and communicated the informa-
tion to several persons, and said he got it from Captain William G. Sanders and
others at Tampa, and that there was proof of the fact, as he understood from them.
I well recollect that, previous to my leaving Key West, I one morning observed a
Spanish vessel coming in at the Northwest passage from the direction of Tampa
and Charlotte's harbor, which vessel brought no cargo, nor do I know whether or
not she carried away any to Cuba. The Collector at Key West, near two months
previous to this time, had suspended from duty the inspector of customs at
Charlotte's harbor, for refusing spiritous liquors to be landed on the island where
he lived, and upon which also a Spanish subject, named Caldez, lives, and who is
carrying on a fishery, and has a vessel trading there under Spanish colors, manned
in part by Seminole Indians. There is but one citizen of the United States attached
to the concern, who is the person that brought the charges against the inspector,
and who has been going backward and forward in the Spanish schooner since that
time. With this exception, the fishery is carried on by Spaniards and Indians, and is
owned by a man named Badia, who lives in Havana. I know that the Spaniards
interested in the fisheries have been much dissatisfied on account of the proposed
removal of the Indians, and that they have heretofore derived much benefit from
the services of the Indians at the fisheries, and on board their vessels, and that this
man Caldez is more dreaded by, and has more influence over, the Indians than he
ought to have. There being no inspector at this point, and the collector having sent
the revenue-cutter to New Orleans, arms and ammunition, or any thing else in any
quantity, could have been landed there at any time with impunity. As the southern

42 TEQUESTA

section of Florida is very little known, except to the Indians, I take the liberty to
offer you such information as a residence of more than twelve years in that section
of country has enabled me to obtain.
From Cape Roman, on the west coast, to Cape Sable, and from thence to
Cape Florida, are innumerable islands, formed by rivers and creeks running from
the Everglade (so called), and having their source the great Lake Macaco, where
the Indians go in their light canoes, and where they have some towns and
cornfields. This part of the country is little known to the white man, but the Indians
are perfectly acquainted with it, and if they are drawn from their present position,
they will certainly go there. I have good authority, upon which I can rely that many
canoes, with women and children, and some men, have been sent there some time
ago, and if the warriors are driven there, they can sustain themselves against
four-times their number. They can live on the county root, which abounds in the
vicinity of Cape Florida and New River, and the great abundance of fish and turtle
which abound in the rivers and on the seacoast, and which they take in any quantity
at pleasure. From Cape Sable to Cape Florida, inside of Key West and the other
keys, there is but one white man living who has ever penetrated it and passed
through it and it is there the Indians have their hunting-grounds, and from whence
they can retire into the islands in the everglades, and can go to the east as far as, and
even beyond, New River, and to Charlotte's harbor on the west. Steamboats of light
draught of water, having small boats of the least possible draught, are the only
means by which you follow the Indians in their canoes. One should go to Cape
Florida and proceed east to Indian River, where she can enter and go up to the
Lagoon, and the St. Sebastian and St. Lucia rivers. Another should go down
through Key Biscayne Bay (where the light-house is) and into Barnes's sound, and
pass through in boats to Cape Sable; and another should go through from Indian
Key to Cape Sable and proceed along the coast to Cape Roman and Charlotte's
harbor. These vessels and boats should, by all means, get pilots at Indian Key; and
the neighborhood, who have a knowledge of the navigation, as any person
unacquainted will find the greatest difficulty to get along. I am thus particular,
because I know much inconvenience and difficulty will occur in the fitting out an
expedition to go on a coast so little known, and I am certain that if the Indians once
get down there, they can sustain themselves for years against a superior force, and
that it will be impossible to starve them out.
I very much hope that the Government will see the necessity of destroying
those Spanish fisheries, and of prohibiting their vessels from carrying on any trade
on the coast. I tender you my services in any way I can be useful in any expedition
which may be sent to any part of the Territory.'
Respectfully, your most obedient servant,
General R.K. Call C. Fitzpatrick

With the beginning of the actual fighting in the Seminole war,
Fitzpatrick volunteered for service, and served as General Clinch's aide-
de-camp during the first major campaign of the Second Seminole War.
Fitzpatrick was a picture of the courageous planter. The U.S. House of
Representatives' Committee on Military Affairs left this description of
Fitzpatrick: "Rich, generous, and patriotic, he [Fitzpatrick] is described,
when joining the staff of General Clinch, as bringing with him his own
horses and servant, and as then living at his own cost." The same

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 43

Committee described Fitzpatrick's activities during that campaign with
General Clinch:
... He was appointed an aid-de-camp by General Clinch in his Seminole cam-
paign, and served in that capacity from the fall of 1835 to the month of May or June
following- up to the retirement of that general. He was better acquainted with the
country the field of military operations than any man in the army. He was bold
and intelligent, and always ready and forward to render any useful service. He
enjoyed the confidence of his general; and it is proved by a gallant officer, who was
associated in the service with him Captain Thurston, formerly of 3d regiment
artillery--that "no one in General Clinch's wing of the army rendered more active
and real service than he did." His conduct did not fail to attract the attention of the
close-observing general-in-chief. General Scott says that he personally saw much
of Col. Fitzpatrick in the march from Fort Drane to Tampa Bay and back to the
north of Florida, in the campaign, and that he can testify to his zeal and the great
value of his services in that march...2

Subsequently, Fitzpatrick was appointed aide-de-camp by General
Call shortly after Call took over the prosecution of the war. Fitzpatrick
served in that position from September 20, to December 7, 1836, when
Call was relieved by General Jesup. During his service with Call,
Fitzpatrick was promoted from Captain to Colonel, a title by which
Fitzpatrick preferred to be addressed for the rest of his life. Call testified
about Fitzpatrick's service:
... Colonel Fitzpatrick was a valuable and efficient member of his staff, perform-
ing, as necessity required, the duties of aid-de-camp and quartermaster during the
campaign against the Seminole Indians.3

Fitzpatrick's association with Call led to a role in one of the more
notorious incidents of the Second Seminole War. From the beginning of
the war, Florida citizens and military officers had written to the U.S. War
Department urging that bloodhounds be used to track the elusive
Seminole. Cuban bloodhounds had been used extremely successfully
during the Maroon Wars in Jamaica; The Maroon War in 1795, for
example, had ended within a month after the introduction of Cuban
bloodhounds. By 1838, General Zachary Taylor had requested and been
granted permission to use bloodhounds, but never followed up on the
project.4 Governor Call finally decided to take the matter into his own
hands in 1839 and sent Fitzpatrick to Cuba to get the bloodhounds which
more and more people had become convinced could end the war. After a
month in Cuba, Fitzpatrick returned to Florida on January 6, 1840, with
33 bloodhounds and 5 Cuban trainer-keepers for the dogs. For his time
and efforts, Fitzpatrick received $1,000. The entire expedition had cost
$5,006.83, with the 33 dogs at $2,733.00 accounting for most of the total.5

44 TEQUESTA

Fitzpatrick's return to Florida launched a storm of controversy all
over the United States over the degree of cruelty to which the armed
forces should be allowed to resort in their prosecution of the war.
Northern newspapers had reported the arrival of the dogs, and readers
petitioned their Congressmen protesting the cruelty and inhumanity
which would be inherent in turning the dogs loose to attack the Indians,
as had been done in Jamaica.6 While it is difficult to know what might
have happened if bloodhounds had been used extensively, Fitzpatrick
indicated that the dogs were intended solely as tracking dogs to be used
with muzzles. One visitor to Tallahassee, who was present at Governor
Reid's house the night Fitzpatrick arrived from Cuba, described this
meeting and in doing so, shed some light on the dog's intended use:

Washington City, February 8, 1840
Dear Sir: In compliance with your request, that I would communicate in writing
what I have previously mentioned in conversation, as having heard while passing
through Florida on my way here, respecting the bloodhounds recently brought
there from Cuba, and the purpose for which they were procured, I beg leave to
state that on the 6th ultimo, during a sojourn of two or three days at Tallahassee,
while paying a visit at the residence of the present governor, a gentleman entered
the parlor, who was introduced as Colonel Fitzpatrick, and who informed Gover-
nor Reid, that he had just arrived from Cuba with a number of bloodhounds, to
obtain which, he had been dispatched, as I understood him, under authority from
ex-Governor Call, and the legislature of Florida; Col. Fitzpatrick spoke of the
difficulties which he had had in getting those dogs, thirty-three in number; the
high price paid for them, and the great trouble arising from boisterous weather and
scarcity of provisions, owing to the voyage being of unusual length, in bringing
them over; he expressed a desire that Governor Reid should give immediate
instructions to have them taken from on board the vessel, then lying at Port Leon or
St. Marks, as they were very much reduced and feeble from want of proper food,
and put in some fit place, under the charge of five Spaniards, whom he had hired in
Cuba as their keepers, and who were the only persons capable of managing them.
A good deal was said as to the manner in which they were to be used in operating
against the Indians, and I believe, as well as I can recollect, and my recollection is
pretty distinct, Col. Fitzpatrick, who appeared most conversant with the mode of
keeping and using them, observed that they were always muzzled unless being fed;
that, when employed in order to discover a hiding or retreating enemy, a keeper
was appointed to each dog to hold him in leash, and endeavor to put him on the
scent, which, once found, he rarely lost the pursuers following close up to the
keeper, and were thus conducted to the object of their search.
The dogs were described by Colonel Fitzpatrick as possessing fine wind,
great strength, bottom, and courage, and as differing from the common hound in
one particular, which made them of infinite service in chase of a lurking enemy:
they rarely, or never, gave tongue to warn him of the approach of his pursuers. I was
not led to believe, from any thing which I heard on the occasion alluded to, or
indeed at any other time during my journey through Florida, that those dogs were
to be unmuzzled and let slip to assail the hostile marauding Indian warriors, and
destroy their women and children. I am persuaded that the people of Florida,

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 45

dreadfully as they have suffered from the ferocity of the Indians, would not
countenance such a species of warfare.
Colonel Fitzpatrick, who, I have since learned is an officer of the Florida
militia, struck me as being a gentleman of great intelligence and decided
character.7
Though the first trials of the dogs in Florida seemed promising, the
whole controversy eventually proved to be over nothing. For whatever
reason, perhaps because of the difficult terrain, the bloodhounds eventu-
ally were found to be of no help at all and they never were used again after
their experimental trials.8
Fitzpatrick's activities during the Second Seminole War were those
of a man imbued with the image of the soldier-planter, the image of
courageous, dutiful, glorious military service. The image had developed
in planter ideology for good reason: However calm on the surface
plantation society might seem, just beneath lurked tensions which at
every moment threatened insurrection. In Florida, in combination with
the Indian struggle, those tensions exploded into the bloodiest class
insurrection in the history of the South. Faced with both the destruction
of his dream of a South Florida plantation society, and the destruction of
the whole plantation system throughout Florida even threatening to
stretch into other portions of the South Fitzpatrick's ideology served its
purpose. The gentleman fought with energetic vengeance.

THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL, 1835-1840, AND THE
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1838
Locally-oriented Bills
In 1835, Fitzpatrick returned to the Legislative Council, defeating
Ed Chandler in the election of May 1834. Fitzpatrick's margins of victory
were astounding for someone who just two years previously had been
defeated by the same man he defeated; Chandler 74-4 at Key West, and
25-10 at Indian Key' Fitzpatrick went on to become Monroe County's
representative again in 1836, and then represented Dade in the 1837, 1838,
1839 and 1840 sessions, and in addition represented Dade in the 1838
Constitutional Convention.
Fitzpatrick's legislative activities during these years were too
numerous to be exhaustively catalogued; with a comparatively secure
seat, well-respected by his colleagues, Fitzpatrick became one of the
most powerful and active members of the Legislative Council. He was
chairman of at least one standing committee each session, and in 1836
was elected President of the Legislative Council. Of all the areas of

46 TEQUESTA

Fitzpatrick's legislative activity during these years, two areas stood out
from the rest in their importance for this study: Fitzpatrick's local
bills, and his participation in the banking controversy which led to the
development of parties in Florida politics.
During the 1835 session, Fitzpatrick presented a petition from Key
West residents requesting the repeal of the 1832 Act incorporating Key
West. Assigned to a select committee which included Fitzpatrick, the
petition resulted in a bill repealing Key West's charter and directing the
City Council to turn over all the tax money in the City Council's
possession to the Justices of the Peace in the city. Every refusal by the
City Council to turn over the City's funds was punishable by a fine of fifty
dollars. Governor Eaton vetoed the bill because it provided that no
appeal could be made from a judgment rendered against the City Council
for refusing to turn over the tax money. After the veto, Fitzpatrick moved
that the bill be reconsidered, the section prohibiting appeals was struck
from the bill, and the bill was passed.2
The bill's passage prompted much dismay in Key West. The En-
quirer printed the following response by the Key West City Council
attacking the Legislative Council's action:
... Your Committee have heard that a few persons, most of whom are naturalized
citizens, not perfectly accustomed to our laws, objected to the payment of taxes,
and for the purpose of avoiding the payment of the same, petitioned the Legislative
Council to repeal the City Charter. They also knew, that a petition from many of
our intelligent and active citizens was sent to our representative, praying for some
slight modification of the Charter. There is no evidence that this last petition was
laid before the Council, while it would seem, that the first mentioned petition
received a large share of consideration, by the enactment of the law above recited.
By the 2d section of this law it is provided, that all the money which has in any
manner been collected by this Corporation, shall be paid over to the Justices of the
Peace of this City, under heavy penalties, and this whether the money had been
expended on public improvements or not. It is not then a provision for disposing of
any unexpended balance that may be left, but a cool, and deliberate demand of our
private funds to the extent of all the taxes that have been collected since the
incorporation of this City until the date of this law!! The burst of indignation, with
which this law was received by our intelligent fellow citizens, is evidence, that
here, where the facts are well known, the reputation of the members of this
Corporation will not be affected by the passage of this extraordinary law. The 2d
section is calculated to injure the reputation of the members, because it gives the
impression to those, unacquainted with Florida legislation, that the members of
this Board have appropriated the funds of the public to their own private emolu-
ment Such must have been the impression of a majority of the Legislative
Council, or the act must have been "read by its title" only, and passed without
examination. But by what misrepresentation this impression has been given is
beyond the knowledge of this Committee...
It [the bill] professes also to give power to any Justice of the Peace, disposed
to act the petty tyrant, to take the private and individual property of the members

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 47

of this Board for public uses, and so far from making "just compensation", it
affixes a penalty of fifty dollars for every objection to this species of legalized
robbery.
By the objections of the Executive to this law, it appears, that the 2d section
was originally more objectionable than at present, by making the Justice a modern
Gesler, from whose decision there could be no appeal!!
Your Committee wishes to speak respectfully of the exercise of Legislative
power, but they discover in the act under consideration a tone and spirit unexam-
pled in modern times, destructive of the rights of others, and well calculated to
arouse a just indignation in those having a proper sense of self-respect. A silent
acquiescence would become tame and submissive slaves, who are accustomed to
crouch at the footstools of power.
There can be no palliation for the act in question. Misrepresentation, might
have been an inducement to repeal the charter, but it could be no excuse for
robbing the pockets of others. If evils really existed, the ballot box might have
cured them. If wrongs were done, the law gave a remedy There was no call for
such extraordinary legislation. The haste was indecent, as a few days would have
terminated the City Council.
In the opinion of your Committee, the said act of 29th January is null and
void, because it is contrary to the organic law yet your Committee recommend
an application to Congress to repeal the same, that our Statute Book be not
polluted with evidences of personal legislation.. .
Fitzpatrick's motivations for passing this bill are unclear; as previ-
ously noted, he had very few taxable interests in the city. It is possible he
received only one of the two petitions and merely acted on what he
thought his constituents wanted. It is doubtful, however, that Fitzpatrick
would have been so unaware of the real situation. It is more likely that
Fitzpatrick was feuding with one or more members of the Council for
some reason, and was thus favorably disposed to act on the petition
requesting the abolition of the City Council. Also, quite naturally, being
a Justice of the Peace, Fitzpatrick must have thought that Justices of the
Peace would be better entrusted with the people's tax money. If this
interpretation is closest to the truth, then Fitzpatrick's actions were
another example of the uncompromising attitude Fitzpatrick usually took
on political issues. (In a general sense, Fitzpatrick's uncompromising
attitude was typical of his class, an attitude which later resulted in the
formation of the Whig Party in Florida. Fitzpatrick was sure of his
essential rightness on every issue. This was a natural part of an ideology
formed in the crucible of master-slave relations. Such an attitude, and the
actions resulting from it, made the planter-politician different than the
bourgeois politicians of the 1800's, and certainly from the bourgeois
politicians of today; in a positive sense, Fitzpatrick's uncompromising
attitude throughout his legislative career can be seen as an unyielding
stand on principle, the precise lack of which condemns bourgeois politi-
cian's mouthings of ideas suitable for the election marketplace.)

48 TEQUESTA

As uncompromising actions often do, Fitzpatrick's rescinding of
the Key West Charter proved to be unpopular with the Island's voters. As
threatened, a group of Key West's most prominent citizens did petition
Congress to rescind the Territoral statute,4 and Fitzpatrick narrowly
escaped losing in the next election to William R. Hackley, a local attorney
and former Port Warden. Fitzpatrick's huge margin of the previous year
was cut to 41-38 in Fitzpatrick's favor in Key West.5 Although all of
Fitzpatrick's slip in voting strength probably should not be attributed to
his actions on the Key West Charter, certainly those actions had played
an important role.
The petition to Congress about the Charter had the desired effect,
for the Congressional Committee on Territories reported against the
Florida law rescinding the Key West Charter. Perhaps for that reason,
Fitzpatrick had the 1836 Council enact a new statute incorporating the
City of Key West.6 The new city's taxing powers were somewhat cur-
tailed; while the items that could be taxed were substantially the same,
the new law set upper limits on the amounts which could be levied. In the
matter of the real estate tax, the law was changed from the old provision
of "not more than one half of one per centum" to "not more than
one-sixth, and not less than one-eighth of one percent."7 The new law
was apparently generally acceptable in Key West, for it remained un-
changed until 1846. Whether or not the law's passage would have helped
Fitzpatrick in his next election is impossible to determine, however, and
probably made no difference to Fitzpatrick even when he was writing the
New law, for Fitzpatrick's next term on the Council was as the representa-
tive from Dade County.
Elected President of The Legislative Council by a unanimous vote
in 1836, Fitzpatrick used his power to have a new county created in South
Florida, Dade County. The creation of Dade was another of Fitzpatrick's
efforts to develop southeast Florida, and incidentally indicates that
Fitzpatrick was intending to spend more time on his plantation by moving
his legal residence from Key West to the Miami plantation in order to be
Dade's representative.
Fitzpatrick was not the instigator of the original proposal to create a
new county out of the northern part of Monroe, though it was possible
that he had a role in the formation of the idea. Jacob Housman had long
been trying to establish Indian Key's independence from Key West, and
this desire, coupled with the inconvenience of jury duty in Key West
resulted in a petition requesting the formation of a new county from the
northern part of Monroe. Fifty-seven residents of the northern part of

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 49

Monroe County, including residents from both Indian Key and the Cape
Florida area signed the petition addressed to the Legislative Council. The
petition read:
To the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida:
The memorial of undersigned citizens of the County of Monroe in said Territory
respectfully represents, that your memorialists reside in the northern section of
said County, some of them two hundred and thirty miles from the court house, and
none less than seventy five miles from it, the whole of which distance they are
obliged to travel by water in open boats in tempestous weather during the fall and
winter months. Your memorialists are not generally detained by public duty more
than six days and sometime not so much; but in bad weather they are frequently
unable to reach their homes in less than three or four weeks. Their jury fees will
not pay their board in Key West, and the whole of their expenses of boat hire and
provisions are a dead loss to them besides having to leave their families and
domestic concerns at the times they are most required to be at home Your
memorialists believe that no people in the U. States have ever been in a similar
situation, and a cursory view of the map will be sufficient to convince your Hon'l.
body of the necessity of granting them relief. They therefore pray that the County
be divided as follows, a line running from West end Bay Honda Key, to Cape Sable
and from thence to Lake Macaco, and thence to the head of what is known now as
Hilsboro River, (the north branch) and down said River to the Atlantic Ocean.
Your memoralist would further represent that so long as Monroe County remains
in its present state, that the public interests must of necessity be neglected and the
ends of Justice be defeated, this has frequently been the case of late, and the reason
is witnesses and jurors cannot find the means to transport themselves by water to
Key West to the Court House. Your petitioners will ever be found willing to
perform all the public duties incumbent upon them as good citizens, but some of
them are in circumstances which precludes the possibility of their attending at Key
West as witnesses or Jurors.8
The petition resulted in a bill creating Pinckney County, most likely
named after Charles Coatsworth Pinckney, the prominent Southern
politician. After the Dade Massacre, however, the name of the county
was changed to Dade and was passed unanimously on January 28, 1836.
One provision in the original bill which was deleted before it was
introduced was a section which stated:
... That the Counties of Monroe and Pinckney, shall compose one Election district
for a member of the Legislative Council heretofore elected from Monroe County,
until further provision be made for the same by act of Congress...?

This section was deleted probably because Fitzpatrick decided that he
would like the opportunity to represent just the small group of people in
the new county where he had his plantation most likely with the belief
that he would have a much easier task of election from Dade alone than he
would in a district which included Key West. From this point on, Fitz-
patrick was either unopposed or received only token opposition in his
later elections.

50 TEQUESTA

Jacob Housman was the first signature, prominently placed, on the
petition for the new county, and he had probably been the man responsi-
ble for the drafting of the petition. Equally important, however, at least in
the passage of the resulting bill, was Fitzpatrick and Fitzpatrick's desire
to develop the Cape Florida area. One might assume that Fitzpatrick was
Housman's man in the Council, and that the creation of Dade County was
solely attributable to Housman. But neither of these are valid assump-
tions. No evidence, for example, indicates that Fitzpatrick had previously
allied himself with Housman on any matter peculiar to Indian Key's
interest, evidence which would lead us to assume a close alliance be-
tween Fitzpatrick and Housman. And while we can only guess that
Fitzpatrick might have had a hand in the creation of the petition request-
ing the formation of a new county, an idea in which Housman would most
certainly have realized Fitzpatrick would have a great interest, we know
that, as the powerful President of the Legislative Council, Fitzpatrick
would have only allowed the Dade County bill to pass if he wanted it to
do so. In other words, while the idea for Dade County was probably
attributable mainly to Housman, the actual creation of Dade County
occurred because the new county carried forward Fitzpatrick's own plans
for the area.
Fitzpatrick introduced several other bills from 1835 to 1838 predi-
cated on and attempting to effect the development of the southeast
Florida area. The bills after 1836, in particular are indications that even
after the Cooley massacre, he still fully intended after the end of the
Seminole War to return to his plantation and to resume his efforts to
develop the area.
During the 1835 session, Fitzpatrick introduced a bill to create the
South Florida Land Company. The bill created a corporation with the
power to buy and sell land in South Florida, but probably also with the
belief that the corporation would ultimately lead to greater purchases of
land in the area. After all, the creation of such a corporation would have
probably led to increased advertising of the land in South Florida, as well
as to a focusing and strengthening of other efforts to sell the land in the
area. The South Florida Land Company bill passed the Council, but
Governor Eaton vetoed the bill, on the basis that:

... if the policy and principles asserted in this act, becomes general through our
country, these incorporated companies may engross the most valuable lands, and
finally establish a system of tenantry, than which nothing is more detrimental to
the interest of a free people.... In a new country the assertion of the principle may
not be very hazardous; but where principle is concerned, circumstances should not
change it.?

Richard Fitzpatricks South Florida 51

While it must have been obvious at the time that Fitzpatrick did not have
in mind the establishment of a system of tenantry, Eaton's argument was
nonetheless compelling enough to get four legislators to change their
minds and thus prevent the achievement of the two-thirds majority
necessary to override the veto. Fitzpatrick retained the idea for the South
Florida Land Company and reintroduced the bill in the 1838 session. The
bill was never taken up after it was introduced in that session, however,
which finally laid the idea to rest."
During the 1837 session, Fitzpatrick introduced a bill creating the
East and South Florida Canal Company, which passed and became a law
on February 12, 1837. This bill created a corporation "with the power and
privilege of constructing a canal from Biscayne Bay at Cape Florida, to
S. Augustine, and the River St. Johns for the transportation of produce,
goods, wares, and merchandise of every description... ," with the addi-
tional proviso that "if at any time the said company, shall think proper to
extend their canal to Charlotte Harbour and Tampa Bay on the west are
hereby invested with the right, power, and privilege of doing so..." The
bill also gave the company:
... the right and privilege to own steam boats, vessels, boats, piers, docks, ware
houses, and every other species of property necessary to carry on their affairs, and
for the storage, transportation, and conveyance of passengers, goods, wares, and
merchandize of any kind whatsoever, and they shall also have the right to charge
toll upon all vessels, boats, goods, wares, and merchandize, and also to charge
passage money on all passengers which may pass through said canal in boats or
vessels which do not belong to the company.. 12
The Board of Directors of the East and South Florida Canal Com-
pany read like a who's who of East and South Florida, including Robert
Raymond Reid, Charles Downing, and Duncan L. Clinch of East
Florida, and Fitzpatrick, James Webb, William Marvin, and Oliver
O'Hare of South Florida. Even with such powerful backers, however, the
corporation had trouble procuring subscriptions for all the stock offered.
Fitzpatrick therefore introduced a bill in the 1838 session, which became
law, that extended the period for subscriptions by one year, because of
"the existence of the Indian War which is now raging in the Southern
portion of the Territory.. "13
It is impossible to know how much stock was eventually subscribed
for, but it is probable that at least enough was subscribed for to encourage
Fitzpatrick to continue to plan for the operation of the canal. By 1840
Fitzpatrick had "made arrangements in England for the construction of
Four Iron Steamboats for the purpose of navigating the Rivers of
Florida," and he asked Congress:

52 TEQUESTA

... to grant him the priviledge of introducing the said steam boats with their
Engines, Boilers and other fixtures complete, into the Territory of Florida free of
any duties whatever... knowing as he does that other persons in the United States
particularly in the State of Georgia have had these privileges granted to them .. 4

Fitzpatrick most likely had the proposed South Florida canal in mind
when ordering these steamboats. Even if Fitzpatrick had to use the
steamboats in some other area until the canal was built, by attempting to
obtain steamboats he at least readied himself for the canal to which he
most assuredly was committed.
Another of the internal improvement laws relative to South Florida
in which Fitzpatrick had a role in passing was the act creating the
Southern Life Insurance and Trust Company. While this law was much
less confined in importance to the South Florida area than such laws as
those creating the South Florida Land Company and the East and South
Florida Florida Canal Company, and while Fitzpatrick's role was corres-
pondingly more peripheral on this bill than on those others, Fitzpatrick's
role was nevertheless still significant. Fitzpatrick was one of the original
directors of the Southern Life Insurance and Trust Company, as Chair-
man of the Committee on Banks was influential in securing the passage
of the bill.15 The Southern Life Insurance and Trust Company bill was
intended to provide the same banking opportunities for East and South
Florida that Middle Florida enjoyed with the Union Bank. Fitzpatrick
undoubtedly hoped that the Southern Life Company would be a further
impetus to the development of a plantation-based infrastructure in South
Florida. If the Southern Life Company functioned as the Union Bank did
in Middle Florida, then the new bank would finance the buying of
agricultural land, perhaps even through the medium of a South Florida
Land Company, and also finance the building of a transportation system
to help move the crops produced on that agricultural land, a transporta-
tion system such as a South Florida Canal.

The Banking Controversy
Fitzpatrick's support for the Southern Life Company Bill in 1835
signified more than merely Fitzpatrick's anticipation of a bank's pro-
jected benefit for the South Florida area. Fitzpatrick had been and
continued throughout his legislative career to be strongly in favor of the
creation of banking institutions all over the territory. In previous sessions,
Fitzpatrick had voted for bills creating or giving more power to the Bank
of Pensacola, the Bank of Appalachicola, the Magnolia Bank, and the
Union Bank. In subsequent years, Fitzpatrick became so identified with

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 53

the banking interests in the territory that the Appalachicola Gazette, in
telling the story of how St. Joseph had been chosen for the site of the
Constitutional Convention of 1838 commented:
The selection of St. Joseph resulted from a log-rolling compromise between the
East and the West. Says Fizzy [Fitzpatrick] to Peter [Representative Peter Gautier
of St. Joseph], "Scratch my back and ['ll tickle your elbow." The Proposition
suited the fancy of both parties. So Peter scratched the Banks, and Fizzy tickled the
Town.. ,16

Florida's banks, like the rest of the banks of the South, functioned to
augment planter hegemony. The banks lent money mainly to planters,
with almost all of the loans intended for the purchase of land and slaves,
and for expenditures incidental to the movement of crops-expenditures
which met the test of being viable and proper in the planter economic and
social system. Whereas, in the frontier West, banks functioned to pro-
vide for the expansion of vigorous agrarian capitalism, lending money
for industrial as well as agricultural development, in Florida and the rest
of the South banks worked to strengthen the slave system alone."7
As might be expected in a society dominated by the planter class,
support for the creation of banks was relatively common and politically
uncontroversial through most of the 1830's. While Florida's governors,
appointed by anti-bank Jacksonians in the federal government, usually
vetoed banking legislation, the Legislative Council had no trouble over-
riding the vetoes. Nor was support for the banks an election issue. The
Panic of 1837, however, with its effects in Florida of lower cotton prices,
the stopping of specie payments, and the depreciation of currency,
changed the situation."s
For the first time, party- and issue-oriented politics predominated
over the traditional fragmentary and unrelated local concerns during the
elections for representatives to the constitutional convention of 1838. The
key issue in almost every election for the convention throughout Florida
became whether the candidate was pro- or anti-bank. In subsequent
elections, the more organized pro- and anti-bank groups became the
Whig and Democratic parties, respectively. Much later, most planters in
Florida, and in the rest of the South as well, came to support the
Democratic position against easy credit, correctly viewing easy credit
policies as contributing to an over production of cotton and thus to lower
prices.19 In the early years of the Whig and Democratic parties in Florida,
however, to most planters, including Fitzpatrick, the Democrats and their
policies clearly represented a serious challenge to the economic and
political hegemony of the planter class.

54 TEQUESTA

In the election in Dade County for a member of the Constitutional
Convention, Fitzpatrick was opposed by L. Windsor Smith, from Key
Vacas, and William E English, Fitzpatrick's nephew. In Dade, unlike
most of Florida, the bank issue was not an important part of the election.
The vote simply came down to people in Key Vacas voting for the
resident of their island, L. Windsor Smith (36-0-0 in Smith's favor), and
people on Indian Key voting for their favored candidate, Fitzpatrick (73
for Fitzpatrick, to 4 for Smith, and 1 for English). Fitzpatrick won simply
because the residents of Indian Key far outnumbered those on Key
Vacas.20
It is much more difficult to determine the circumstances surround-
ing the corresponding election in Key West. The Panic of 1837 had
affected the economy of the area, such that at a meeting of the Key West
City Council in the summer of 1837,

The citizens of Key West...agreed to receive Mexican doubloons at $16 and
Spanish doubloons at $17 each, until the value of the same shall be altered by a
meeting of the citizens called for that purpose. The same meeting which fixed the
above standard passed the following resolution:
Resolved, That in order to decrease the amount of bank notes now in
circulation, we do agree that from and after the first day of July, we will not receive
any Florida or Western notes, except at a discount of ten per cent; it being
understood that these rates may at any time be altered by a meeting of the citizens
called for that purpose.21

Of the three candidates for Monroe's two places in the Convention,
William Marvin, Joseph B. Browne, and William H. Shaw, Marvin and
Browne were victorious, but all three candidates were anti-bank.22 While
it is impossible to determine with certainty the depth of anti-bank
sentiment that existed in Key West without the existence of a pro-bank
candidate on the ballot, the subsequent election in Key West of only
anti-bank Democrats in every Council and Delegate election in the
Territorial period would seem to indicate that anti-bank sentiment was so
strong in Key West that no bank supporter would even bother to run.
It is difficult to know with certainty the degree to which this
anti-bank sentiment was also an anti-planter, anti-status-quo sentiment.
The 1838 election for Mayor of Key West, however, in which Mayor
Whitehead was turned out of office by Tamasco Sachetti, a "low, illiter-
ate character, the keeper of a sailor grog shop,"23 seems to indicate an
increase in resistance to the traditional power structure. The election
could be considered to be just another, albeit unusual, upper-class split
over purely local concerns, in which a group of merchants, disgruntled

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 55

over paying occupational taxes, joined together to oust Mayor
Whitehead. The simultaneity of the events of this election, however, with
the increase in resistance to planter hegemony all over the state after the
Panic of 1837, would seem to be far more than coincidence. It is quite
likely that an increase in "loco-foco" sentiment in Key West among the
lower-classes and among a significant portion of the non-planters in the
ruling class was at least as responsible for the election of Tomaso Sachetti
as was the dispute over the payment of occupational taxes. Commenting
on Sachetti's election, Jefferson Browne wrote that "The low element,
elated at the prospect of one of their ilk being mayor of the city, rallied to
Sachetti's standard, and as he also had the moral support of a few of the
prominent citizens, no self-respecting man could be induced to run
against him."24 A hint as to the kind of upper-class support Sachetti
received was contained in Whitehead's comment about Sachetti's ally,
Charles Walker, of whom Whitehead said, "He was a lawyer from New
York, a loco-foco, an agrarian, a disorganizer, etc."25
Sachetti probably received no opposition for the same reason no
pro-bank candidate bothered to run for the Constitutional Convention,
because the overwhelming support in Key West of the lower-class, along
with a significant portion of the upper-class, for Sachetti and other
"loco-foco" candidates made it impossible for someone else to win.
The consistently and overwhelmingly Democratic voting record on the
part of Key West voters, including but not at all limited to the vote for the
1838 Convention, along with the election of Tamasco Sachetti, provide
more indications of weakness in the hegemony of the planter class in
Key West.
The bank issue was by far the most controversial during the 1838
Constitutional Convention itself. Fitzpatrick, as chariman of the Com-
mittee "On Relations with the General Government, and the Right of the
People to claim admissions into the National Confederation as a
State...," and as the author of a strong pro-statehood resolution, was the
key figure in the debate over the statehood issue, but he was also quite
important in the banking controversy.26
Fitzpatrick began the Convention hoping that the conflict over the
banks could be resolved. The whole discussion over the Banking Com-
mittee's and other individuals' proposed constitutional provisions on
banks led off with Fitzpatrick's offer of "a substitute for all the proposi-
tions which he (Fitzpatrick) thought would satisfy all the gentlemen, and
remove the difficulties which seemed to surround this vexed question."27
Fitzpatrick's substitute read:

56 TEQUESTA

Resolved. That the Union Bank of Florida shall, with the consent of the Stock-
holders in said Bank, be adopted as the State Bank of Florida, upon the following
terms, viz:
1. The present Stockholders shall retain the whole of their stock according
to the number of shares which each of them now hold, and shall have the benefit of
the whole of the profits of the Bank to the time of its adoption by the state. Also,
the profits shall be divided in such proportions as they may be entitled to from the
number of shares which each stockholder owns; and no stockholder of the present
bank shall be permitted to subscribe for any more stock in the bank at any time
hereafter.
2. The General Assembly shall at its first session, provide by law, that
books shall be opened in every county in the state, under the direction of proper
persons to receive subscriptions for five millions of stock in said bank, which shall
be secured upon real estate in this state, and owned by citizens resident therein,
and no person shall ever own any stock in this bank, who is not a resident citizen of
the state. The new stockholders shall have the same privileges as the old
stockholders, and they shall secure their subscriptions on real estate, in the same
manner, and draw out of the bank the same proportion of money, as is provided in
the Union Bank Charter; and if the subscriptions, should exceed five millions of
dollars, they shall be scaled down in the same manner as prescribed in said Bank
Charter; and no new stockholder shall be entitled to more than one thousand
shares in the bank.
3. The State shall own five millions of the stock in said bank, and shall
appoint by the General Assembly, five Directors, and the other stockholders shall
elect eight directors. The state shall as soon as the whole of the stock is secured to
her by mortgage, issue state bonds, for ten millions of dollars, to be negotiated by
the bank at such times as may be necessary for the increase of its funds. The bank
shall establish branches at such places in the state, as may be necessary for the
benefit and convenience of the public when required by the General Assembly, or
without the requisition of the General Assembly, if the President and Directors of
the Bank, may think proper to establish any branch.
4. The General Assembly shall provide by law for carrying into effect the
establishment of this State Bank, and shall regulate the payment of interest on the
state bonds, and the application of any surplus accruing to the state, after the
payment of its interest for internal improvements in the state.28

From these proposed resolutions, it was clear that Fitzpatrick believed
that opposition to the banks could be overcome by clearing up the
conflict in the banking laws between public and private interests, a
conflict inherent in the use of territorial faith bonds for the benefit of
privately owned banks.
Of the three banks which had been issued faith bonds, the Union
Bank had been issued the greatest amount and was by far the major focus
of the attack on the banks. In his proposal to the Constitutional Conven-
tion turning the Union Bank into the State Bank, with a major share of
the profits of the bank going to the state treasury, Fitzpatrick hoped to
defuse the criticism that the public credit was being used for private
benefit. What Fitzpatrick's proposed compromise actually did, how-
ever, was to clearly and decisively foist off the problem that the Union

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 57

Bank was having in meeting the payments on its bonds onto the State
government.
Fitzpatrick's resolution, or some variant, was evidently the main
Whig solution offered at the Convention to the banking problem, other
than just adamantly opposing any change at all. George Ward, later the
Whig candidate for Territorial Delegate against Democrat David Levy in
1841 and 1843, offered a similar resolution:
... Mr. Ward, offered the following Preamble and resolutions. Whereas, it is
deemed expedient by this Convention to limit the future legislative power of
Florida, in the creation of Banks. Therefore, Resolved, That the following be
adopted as an article of the Constitution. The power of the General Assembly shall
extend to the establishment of one State Bank with branches, and no more.
In establishing said State Bank, the General Assembly may charter a new
institution, or adopt one of the existing Banks heretofore chartered by the Legisla-
ture of the Territory, such existing Bank to conform to such rules, and regulations,
as the General Assembly may provide.
And whereas, it is deemed by many that the charter of the Union Bank of
Florida, in which the faith of the Territory has been pledged by the Legislature
thereof, does not sufficiently assure to the Territory the inviolable appropriation of
the assets of the Bank, and securities given under the charter to the release and
discharge of the Territory from her liability in virtue of said pledge. And whereas,
the stockholders in said Union Bank are affirmed to this Convention to be willing
to make and execute any further acknowledgement, Lien, or obligations necessary
and proper, and not inconsistent with said Charter. Therefore, Resolved, by this
Convention, that the Territorial Legislature shall provide by law, the manner and
mode in which the foregoing shall be carried out. And further, shall appoint a
committee to examine the affairs of said Bank, and make full and true report
thereof,29

As more and more votes were taken on various restrictive banking
resolutions and it became clear that the Whigs were outnumbered,
Fitzpatrick began to express his disagreement with the anti-bank group's
ideas more and more strictly, beginning in a humorous manner and
ending bitterly. After Mr. Read, of Leon, moved that persons appointed
to inspect the banks should "not be connected in any manner, with any
Bank in the state", Fitzpatrick,
..offered the following additional clause, to the section.
And it shall be the duty of the President and Directors of every Bank in the
State, to have a room prepared in their respective Banks, in which they shall keep a
plentiful supply of the best liquors, wines and cigars, for the use of the visitors and
inspectors of the Banks.. ?

After one particularly long and rancorous discussion on the bank-
ing section of the Constitution on January 4, Fitzpatrick "moved that the
further consideration of the articles and resolutions on Banks, be post-
poned till the 4th day of July next." The vote on Fitzpatrick's motion

58 TEQUESTA

proved to be one of the few victories for the pro-bank group, as the tired
legislators agreed 29 to 27 to Fitzpatrick's resolution. The victory was
short-lived, however, for after a recess of a few hours the convention
reconsidered and voted against Fitzpatrick's resolution.3'
When the resolution on Banking finally went beyond the amend-
ment stage and reached third reading, Fitzpatrick made one final try for
his compromise, moving "to strike out the whole article on Banks, and
insert his resolutions." His motion failed, 39-1432 and finally the entire
anti-bank section of the Constitution passed, 35-1933
The day after the passage of the banking section, Fitzpatrick still
continued to fight, lodging the following protest in the Journal against
the Banking article:
... I protest against the passage of the Article on Banking, and against its insertion
in the Constitution; because, at the time of its passage from a second to a third
reading, there was not a quorum of the members of the Convention present, and
that every section after the seventh section was passed by less than a quorum of the
Convention and because further, that the Convention has refused by a vote, to
reconsider the aforesaid Article on Banking, for the purpose of adopting the same
by a quorum of its members, and passing the Article by such quorum from a
second to a third reading, which had not previously been done, thereby rendering
said article on Banking, an improper and illegal article, which ought not to be
contained in the Constitution of Florida,3

When the whole Constitution finally came up for a vote on January
30, Fitzpatrick proved to be the most stolid and uncompromising of any
of the Whigs; he was the only man to vote against the Constitution.35
On the last day of the Convention, in a final gesture intended to
embarrass the righteous anti-bank protectors of the people's funds,
Fitzpatrick proposed "to relinquish any mileage or pay due him as a
member of the Convention, if other members would do the same." He
further moved that the vote should be by yeas and nays instead of by
voice. Marvin, from Key West, belligerently taking up Fitzpatrick's
challenge, "moved that each member who shall vote aye, shall be
considered as having relinquished his claim to pay." The whole matter
was dropped when Fitzpatrick's motion was laid on the table.36 But
Fitzpatrick, though he later became quite poor, never cashed his warrant
for $444.00 for his Convention pay, an action expressive of the rigid
notions of honor that Fitzpatrick believed himself to be defending
throughout the banking controversy.37
Fitzpatrick was re-elected easily to the Councils of 1839 and 1840,
and he continued his vigorous support for the banks. But the banking
fight was one fight Fitzpatrick did not win. Toward the end of the 1840

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 59

session, during Fitzpatrick's last days as a legislator, Fitzpatrick expres-
sed his regret over the banking situation in a letter to Charles Downing,
Florida's Congressional Delegate:
.. I am told that the new Governor is about to keep up a splendid military
establishment; the poor Territory must pay for it, of course, and we shall have a
real debt entailed on us to keep this department in Champagne and Segars. The
Council will adjourn in 4 days after having examined the Union Bank under the
Resolution of the Senate of the U.S. and made a report in which they demolish that
institution altogether. Our Banks are certainly in a bad condition.. ?8

The social movement resulting in the formation of Florida's Demo-
cratic Party was far from revolutionary. The planter class all over the
South later came to agree with the Democratic stand against easy credit.
Yet, for a time, the movement did represent a challenge to the hegemony
of the planter class. Furthermore, the challenge was quite successful in
its own limited fashion. The banking controversy of the late 1830's was
not the same as the former splits in the Territorial Councils among the
ruling class; Fitzpatrick's role in the banking controversy was a defender
of the planter class against its attackers. For awhile, on a limited but
significant battlefront, the planter class in Florida was beaten, their
economic and political hegemony shaken. Not until 1855, a full ten years
after statehood, was another bank established on Florida soil.

FITZPATRICK'S LAST YEARS IN FLORIDA
In the same letter to Charles Downing of February 24, 1840, in which
Fitzpatrick discussed the destruction of the banking system, Fitzpatrick
outlined a plan to deal with other, more dangerous enemies of the planter
class in Florida: the Seminoles and Seminole Negroes. It was not coinci-
dental that Fitzpatrick mentioned both the Seminole War and the move-
ment against the banks in the same letter to Downing; the two issues were
linked in Fitzpatrick's mind as the two greatest challenges to planter
hegemony which Fitzpatrick faced in his public life. Fitzpatrick's plan to
end the Seminole War, as submitted in his letter to Downing, was the
crowning and ultimate vision of a man whose public life in essence had
been devoted to the suppression of the enemies of his class. Fitzpatrick's
letter and enclosure to Downing read:
Dear Sir: I enclose you the propositions of which I spoke in my last. I am not by
any means disposed to make a jest of the Florida War more particularly of the
means which can be used to put an end to it. I am fully impressed with the belief
that the only means which can be used successfully are such as I now propose to
make use of one thing is certain, that the people of Florida will have confidence in

60 TEQUESTA

the success of them, and will aid them and themselves so as to stick to their little
settlements and property in consequence of that consequence of the force
employed being such as they can rely on to give them protection or at least to keep
the Indians engaged at something else than house burning and murder...
To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress. The undersigned a
citizen of the Territory of Florida would respectfully represent to your Honorable
bodies; That the war with the Seminole Indians who have desolated and laid waste
the fairest portion of Florida has continued since the massacre of the command of
Major Dade in 1835 to the present time, and has baffled the skill and energy of the
bravest and best Generals of the United States Army, and after four years of
unsuccessful operations, and the expenditure of more than Thirty millions of
dollars, those wily savages remain in the undisturbed possession of the country
and are almost daily in the habit of committing the most horrid murders in open
day without fear of being taken, or punished. Your memorialist does not intend to
say anything disrespectful of, or calculated to bring censure on the American
Army, but the experience of more than four years has proven that a different
description of force is absolutely necessary successfully to pursue and destroy
those murderous savages. Various plans have been adopted by the War depart-
ment, and some have been suggested by Honorable members of Congress, all of
which have failed when put in practice. The armed occupation Bill for Florida
proposed to give a bounty of 320 acres of land to ten thousand men, which would
be three millions two hundred thousand acres of land, besides an outfit, and
provisions for one year, Besides this the Government proposes to keep up a
military force in Florida which of itself must be very expensive The object of
your memorialist is to make the following proposition to Congress. If the Govern-
ment will agree to give me the same quantity of land as was proposed to be given
under the armed occupation Bill viz. Three millions two hundred thousand acres-
to be selected by East and South Florida out of the public lands; and also to pay the
sum of Two millions and a half of dollars in the following sums viz. Five hundred
thousand dollars in specie in advance, Five hundred thousand dollars in six
months after operations shall commence. Five hundred thousand dollars in Twelve
months, Five hundred thousand in Eighteen months, and Five hundred thousand
dollars after the Indians are killed or shall have been driven out of the Territory, or
shall emigrate to the West in which case they shall be transported at the expense of
the Government, or if the Government desire it your memorialist will remove
them for an additional compensation to be adjusted on principles of Equity, -
which Congress may fix at once if they so please. Your memorialist has resided in
Florida seventeen years, and is probably as well (or better) acquainted with many
parts of it as any white man living, and has served in two of the hardest Campaigns
of the war without pay, and he has some idea of manner in which an enemy of the
character of Seminole Indians should be fought and conquered. If any reference
should be asked by Congress they are respectfully referred to Genls. Scott, and
Clinch (late) of the regular Army. Genl. Call of Florida, and Genl. Armstrong of
Nashville, Tennessee. The plan which your memorialist and those who will
operate with him intend to pursue and adopt is to take to the woods like Indians,
eat, drink and sleep like Indians; use all the arts and strategems which Indians do,
and to fight the Indian in his own way Your memorialist is certain that the men
who will be employed in this service, are better hunters, better marksmen, and
have greater powers of perseverence, energy, and endurance than the Indian
warrior, and that under a system alone, such as will be pursued by your
memorialist can such men be procured, and the war ended. If this proposition is
acceded to by Congress I shall commence operations in June or July next, and will

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 61

finish the war in Two years or less. The summer months are preferred to commence
operations in for many reasons. Indians are less watchful then and consequently
more easily surprised and killed, they are more easily harassed and bear priva-
tions worse than in the winter months; and by keeping constantly moving you
prevent them from making any concerted movements against the settlements and
effectually prevent them from making a crop. Your memorialist communicated
with many of the best and most experienced officers who have served in the
Volunteer Troops which have been operating in Florida and it is their firm opinion
that any other mode of conquering the Seminole Indians than that herein pro-
posed, will cost the Government millions upon millions, and require many years to
accomplish this desirable object, and in the mean time Florida must be abandoned
almost entirely before the Indians are driven out. Your memorialist believes that
the people of Florida will have more confidence in the protection which they will
have from the force employed by him, than in any other, and that, that force, (being
principally Floridians) will use more efforts to give protection to their fellow
citizens than any other force whatever. Your memorialist avers that it is not from a
desire to make any profit to himself that he makes this proposition, on the contrary
he wishes to make nothing for himself, he would prefer to give all he possesses
small tho it be, to deliver his country from a savage and relentless enemy, who has
laid waste and destroyed a large portion of it. It is such feelings that does induce
him to go into the woods and seek the enemy, and with the hardy woodsmen who
go with him, to drive the enemy from his fastnesses and subdue him.
R. Fitzpatrick1
Downing submitted Fitzpatrick's plan to Congress where it was
referred to the House Committee on Military Affairs on March 16, 1840,
and never heard from again. Self-interested to such a degree that he
needed to be self-deceptive, self-assured to the point of losing touch with
reality, Fitzpatrick made his quint-essential statement in his plan to end
the Seminole War, a monomaniacal vision of trampling down the ene-
mies of the planter class and simultaneously becoming the largest and
richest landowner of all.
Fitzpatrick's enemies, however, ended by trampling on him. On
August 7, 1840, a band of over 100 "Spanish Indians" totally destroyed
Indian Key and forced the abandonment of Dade County to the Indians.
It was the same group about which Fitzpatrick had warned then-
Governor Call in 1835.
While the attack on Indian Key itself has been described on
numerous occasions in the past, for our purposes it is worth noting that
negroes were among the group which attacked Indian Key, or that the
Naval Officer in charge of the area later hinted that negro informants may
have been involved in the coordination of the attack. Lieutenant
McLaughlin's report to the Secretary of the Navy on the Indian Key mas-
sacre stated:
That the Indians were conducted to this attack by some person or persons
acquainted with the localities of the Key, cannot be doubted. Their landing was

62 TEQUESTA

effected on the outside of the Key, at a point most remote from their approach, yet
at a corner of the town uninhabited, whilst every consideration, if ignorant of this
fact, would have induced them to have landed at a point directly opposite. Landing
where they did, their retreat was liable to be cut off; and, but for the loss of his
guns, there is every reason to believe that Mr. Murry would have effected this, in
the destruction of their canoes,; whilst by landing at the opposite point of the Key,
their retreat could have been securely effected on the approach of any danger.
Again, negroes were seen among them who, with others, were heard to speak
English, and these last not in the dialect of the negro. This information is gathered
from sufferers by the attack. Lieutenant Commander Rogers, in the Wave, had left
there but the day before for Cape Roman, carrying with him from Tea Table Key
every man, capable of doing services, but five. That his departure was communi-
cated to or looked for by the Indians, there cannot be a doubt. In the presence of his
force, their invariable policy forbids the belief that they would have ventured upon
the attack.2

The presence of negroes in the attacking force on Indian Key makes it
even clearer that whatever effect the Second Seminole War had on
subsequent Dade County history must be attributed to insurrectionary
negroes as well as Seminoles.
The destruction of Indian Key effectively destroyed Fitzpatrick's
hopes for Dade County. He chose not to run again for the Legislative
Council in the October elections of 1840, indicating that he had probably
left the area or was planning on leaving the area by the time of the
October elections. While such evidence is not conclusive as to his
intention, it is highly doubtful that as highly political a man as Fitzpatrick
would have given up his seat on the Council voluntarily for any reason
less compelling than a decision to leave the area. Fitzpatrick had left
South Florida for certain by October of 1841, when he was mentioned in
court papers as having returned to the area for a short visit.3
Fitzpatrick apparently did not leave Florida for the same reason
many people did that is, to escape creditors. Although he had been
financially hurt by the Seminole War, Fitzpatrick did not owe any large
sums of money to anyone before he left South Florida. His only liability
was a contingent one, as he was in the process of defending the suit by
Fontane & Company against him for around $1,600.00, which Fitzpatrick
subsequently won.
All these signs point to the destruction of Indian Key as the
precipitating event which caused Fitzpatrick to leave South Florida. With
the U.S. Government unlikely to take up his plan to end the Seminole
War, the destruction of Indian Key must have made Fitzpatrick finally
decide that the Seminole War might stretch on for a long, long time. With
the Army ensconced on his plantation until the end of the War, Fitzpat-
rick, at age 48 in 1840, must have decided to try to start up his life again in

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 63

another area before he became too old to do so. Probably with such plans
for a new life in mind, Fitzpatrick borrowed $21,391.00 from his sister
Harriet on February 2, 1842, mortgaging all his lands and slaves.4 By
May 20, 1843, with the Seminole War officially over, Dade County's
population decimated and his plantation in ruins, Fitzpatrick sold all his
land on the Miami and New Rivers to his nephew William F. English for
$16,000.5
Fitzpatrick moved to Brownsville, Texas, which except for a few
intervals became his home for the rest of his life.6 Similar to his situation
in South Florida, Fitzpatrick was one of the largest slaveholders in a
Southern town without many slaveholders. Even the climate was similar
to Key West and Cape Florida. But Fitzpatrick never recovered his
wealth that had been destroyed by the Seminole War. For a time he even
went to California with William F English, each to try his luck in the
Gold Rush.7 But by 1855, Fitzpatrick was described as "overtaken by
misfortune and poverty, in his 62nd year, and in infirm health..."8
Fitzpatrick's life after Florida was not all bleak, however. He must
have been proud of his military service in the Mexican War. He "volun-
teered at Camargo, in August, 1846, for the term of the war, and served as
a private in Capt. McCullough's celebrated company, and was honorably
discharged after the taking of Monterey. During this period of his service,
he was, by permission of Captain McCullough, detached to serve on
General Worth's staff, and he acted on that staff until the capitulation of
Monterey."9 After his military service, through his friendship with
Senator Stephen Mallory, Fitzpatrick obtained several diplomatic posi-
tions. In 1856, Fitzpatrick was appointed Special Commissioner of the
United States to the Government of Paraguay, and then in 1858 was
appointed Consul of the United States at Matamoros, Mexico, right
across the border from Brownsville.10 With the start of the Civil War in
1861, Fitzpatrick became the Commercial Agent for the Confederacy in
Matamoros. He served for several more years in this position for the
Confederacy, but his health was failing." He died in 1865 in Matamoros,
aged 73, a poor man worth only $100 or so.12 Fitzpatrick's life had ended
far differently than he had once envisioned, when he dreamed of owning
over three million acres of Florida land, or merely dreamed of his
precedence over a South Florida filled with plantations.

CONCLUSION
It is asked why South Florida today speaks only through me of capabilities, which
she has failed hitherto to make herself visibly patent to the world? The answer is at

64 TEQUESTA

hand and will convince the most skeptical. War, cruel war, not such war as is said
to be 'the game of kings, whose pawn are men, and stakes are empires;' but war!
war with savages! the midnight torch, the tomahawk and scalping knife. For many
long years was the settlement of the country outside of our island the scene of
savage warfare with the Seminole Indians in our Territory, aided by bands of other
tribes from abroad. The smouldering and blackened ruins of farmhouses, the
mutilated bodies of women and children, testify to the causes which have impeded
settlement and agricultural advancement.'
Water C. Maloney

Although William E English worked Fitzpatrick's plantation for a
while after the end of the Seminole War, he eventually abandoned the
plantation during the Third Seminole War and went to look for gold in
California.2 Other men periodically voiced their belief that South Florida
was a prime location for planters looking for new land, such as the 1851
Florida legislative committee which reported that South Florida had
excellent land for growing tobacco, rice, arrow root, sweet potatoes,
castor oil, indigo, coconuts, limes, guavas, citrons, lemons, gherkins,
and bell peppers.3 Notwithstanding these glimmerings of hope for a
plantation society in South Florida, the prospects for such a society had
reached their zenith in the 1830's, when it actually seemed that the
immigration of significant numbers of sugar planters was just a matter of
a short time. When the Seminoles and Seminole Negroes destroyed
Fitzpatrick's prospects, they destroyed South Florida's prospects for a
plantation-based society as well.
The actions of the Seminoles and Seminole Negroes thus had
profound effects on the future on the whole South Florida region. While
it is impossible to say with certainty what South Florida would have been
like had it not been for the Seminole War, at the very least the Seminoles
and Seminole Negroes had cut off the possibility of the comparatively
weak hegemony of the planter class in Key West being bolstered by at
least a small settlement of planters in the Cape Florida area. At the most,
the Seminoles and Seminole Negroes had prevented the creation of a
society in South Florida similar to Middle Florida's, with large numbers
of slaves, and port towns dependent on the existence of a plantation
backcountry. Instead of such a society, South Florida was dominated in
the antebellum period by a Key West in many ways different and
independent from the rest of the South. Although insurrectionary neg-
roes had lost their overall struggle for freedom in their loss of the
Seminole War, in one area they had in a sense been victorious. By
destroying the prospects for a plantation-based society in South Florida,
insurrectionary negroes and their Seminole allies had gained a victory

Richard Fitzpatrick's South Florida 65

for those negroes whom Fitzpatrick and his fellow planters would have
dominated.
Throughout his years in South Florida, Fitzpatrick consistently
acted in ways designed to strengthen the hegemony of the planter class in
the economy, society, politics, and ideology of the area. The planter class
did maintain its hegemony in the South Florida area during the antebel-
lum period, but in a different manner and to a different degree than in the
rest of Florida, in particular strongly planter-dominated Middle Florida.
Much remains unclear about the ways in which various classes in South
Florida related to each other. This study of Fitzpatrick's life, however,
has shed some light on class interaction, illustrating some of the strug-
gles against and obstructions to planter hegemony, as well as suggesting
that the difference in the degree of strength of planter hegemony was the
major cause of South Florida's differences from the rest of Florida.
Further comparative study is necessary in order to demonstrate conclu-
sively that the causalrexus of South Florida's many differences from the
rest of Florida lay in the differences between areas in the degree of
strength of planter hegemony. It is enough, however, at least for now, to
have learned that class struggle was a significant factor in people's lives in
South Florida, and in particular, of the life of Richard Fitzpatrick.

Conclusion
1. Walter C. Maloney, p. 55.
2. N.H. Davis to Col. John English.
3. Reports of the Committee on Agriculture to the House of Representatives, January, 1851,
in Committee Reports of early State Legislature, State Archives, Tallahassee, Florida.

Sugar Along the Manatee:

Major Robert Gamble, Jr. and the

Development of Gamble Plantation

By Michael G. Schene*

During the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), various proposals were
advanced for permanently extinguishing the Seminole threat. Many felt
that the most feasible solution to the problem would be to encourage
immigration and settlement by white families in East Florida.' Advo-
cates of a system of established settlements realized that the citizen-
soldier would provide the most effective force in suppressing Indian
uprisings.
The ardent expansionist Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri sup-
ported the concept and introduced a measure in Congress containing
these features in 1839. Opponents stymied the bill for several years and it
was 1842 before supporters were able to secure the passage of the Armed
Occupation Act-the country's first homestead act.2 As passed in August
1842, it provided that anyone who settled in certain sections of East
Florida could receive 160 acres of land.3
One of the first areas settled was along the Manatee River, where in
1844, Major Robert Gamble, Jr. decided to establish a sugarcane planta-
tion.4 His action probably represented a group decision and was certainly
the result of a number of considerations.5

*Previous articles in Tequesta by Dr. Schene are "Indian Key" (XXXVI) and "Not
a Shot Fired: Fort Chokonika and the 'Indian War' of 1849-50" (XXXVII). Presently Dr.
Schene is with the National Park Service in Denver.

70 TEQUESTA

Although cotton remained an important cash crop during the
antebellum period in Florida, its precipitous decline during the 1840s
prompted many planters to look for more profitable staple crops, includ-
ing tobacco and sugar.6 Poor cotton prices, combined with Gamble's
previous experience with sugarcane on his father's and uncle's planta-
tions in Middle Florida, no doubt led him to search for lands suitable for
the cultivation of this staple.
"No mystical glamour of gold lured the Manatee Settler... [;] it was
the... [fertile] soil that lured him the wonderful agricultural pos-
sibilities of the place, the charm and intrigue that lay in its scenic beauty
and its ever delightful climate."7 Publicized as an agricultural paradise, it
was the particular adaptability of this soil to the cultivation of sugarcane
that attracted Major Gamble and other Middle Florida planters to the
Manatee River.8 Apparently their expectations were satisfied. Major
Gamble, writing in 1851, emphasized this point stating that: "The cane
cultivated in this State... is more perfect than in any other territory of the
Union."9
Major Gamble's first consideration in the establishment of his
plantation was the purchase and continued acquisition of land. As stated
above, the Armed Occupation Act provided most planters with 160 acres
of free land, and more government land was available in quarter-sections,
half-sections, and sections at a cost of $1.25 to $1.50 per acre.'0 Land
could also be purchased from private individuals at $2.00 to $4.00 per
acre.11 Between 1846 and 1855 Major Gamble obtained land from both
these sources in quarter-section, half-section and section tracts. By 1856,
he had acquired approximately 3,500 acres which he secured for about
$10,000.12
Besides the land, the workers- that is the slaves- constituted the
most important factor in the operation of a sugarcane plantation. Operat-
ing with the most primitive equipment it was back-breaking work to
raise, cultivate, and harvest the sugarcane. Patience and real skill were
involved in the distilling of sugar and molasses from the cane plant.
When not working in the cane fields or at the mill, the slaves were busy
tending other crops or engaged in the myriad other plantation activities.
We do not know how many slaves Major Gamble brought with him
from Middle Florida, but records show that in 1847, he had 70 slaves and
by 1855, that number had increased to 151.13 Major Gamble probably
purchased most or all of these slaves himself. Although fluctuating prices
make it difficult to estimate the amount of money that Gamble paid for
these slaves, they probably represented an investment of $100,000 to

Sugar Along the Manatee 71

The Gamble mansion in the early twentieth century. Today it is restored and open
to the public.

$150,000. The were clearly the most costly factor in the establishment
and operation of his plantation.14
All planters were faced with the problem of acquiring land and
slaves. Some expenditures were also necessary for the equipment used in
the transformation of the raw crop into a marketable product. The
processing of sugarcane required an unusually large outlay of capital on
the planter's part. Among the pieces of equipment included in the
average sugar mill were a boiler, steam engine, horizontal mill (cane
rollers), and kettles. All of these components had to be assembled and
precisely integrated by a master craftsman, and located in specially
designed buildings. It is not surprising that this apparatus could cost as
much as $30,000 and more.15
The process of extracting sugar and molasses from the sugarcane
plant may have been developed among the prehistoric tribes in Asia.16
The procedure was perfected in Latin America during the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries, and Florida sugar planters, as well as
those in the rest of the South, used similar techniques in refining their
sugar.17 The only equipment advancement during the antebellum period
was the use of a vacuum pan. An expensive piece of machinery, it
produced better quality sugar which sold at a higher price.'8 Its use, as
well as the size and range of his equipment, indicates that Major Gamble
was among the most progressive sugar planters in the antebellum South.
Writing in 1868, he described his sugar works:

72 TEQUESTA

I constructed two buildings.... No. 1 180 feet long and 40 feet wide... of brick: 40
feet of the length 22 feet high in the walls, 19 40 do 17 do, 40 do 12 do and 60 do 8
do. The drainage room being [sic] 60 feet long and having a brick cistern on each
side the full length of the house and an additional building having a cooling room
40 by 30 [feet] and a draining room 60 x 60 [feet] made of brick and covered with
iron. I had two steam engines, one of fifty horse power to drive the cane mill which
was a very fine and large one, as you may conceive, when I tell you that the top
roller weighed 5 tons; everything on the premises was in unison. There were two
ranges of boilers for evaporating canejuice [sic] each of 5 kettles, the largest in
each range 500 gallons and at the head of each range a steam pan for granulating; a
second engine of 8 horse power ran my grist and saw mill and supplied water to
boilers which supplied the two steam pans with steam and ran a draining machine
(centrifugal) during the rolling season.20

The cultivation of sugarcane is generally considered to have origi-
nated among the prehistoric tribes of New Guinea. During subsequent
centuries, the basic techniques were assimilated by the Asians. The
Arabs, through their contacts with the Asians, learned these procedures
and introduced them into western Europe. Columbus, during his second
voyage in 1493 to Santo Domingo, planted the first crop of cane in the
New World. It spread rapidly throughout Latin America and the Carib-
bean Islands. A combination of fertile land, slave labor, and an accessible
market resulted in extensive cultivation of sugarcane in this area.21
Sugarcane was grown in various parts of the South, including Florida,
during the latter part of the eighteenth century, but it was not extensively
cultivated within the United States until the nineteenth century. Then, as
before, it required a good deal of expertise and a great expenditure of
labor to produce a profitable crop.
The first task facing the planter was the clearing of his land.22 An
arduous job, it was an odious assignment given to the strongest oxen and
the hardiest slaves.23 Once the land was cleared, a crop such as Indian
corn was planted in the virgin soil. It was followed the next year by
ribbon cane, a hardy variety that would produce a fine crop on almost
anyone's soil and under most conditions.24 Sugarcane required a great
deal of water for it to reach maturity, yet, like many other crops, it could
not survive immersed or partially submerged in water. The maintenance
of this delicate balance necessitated the use of a costly and complex
drainage system. Planters employed practical logic in placing their
ditches and canals, striving to create a system which would quickly
dispose of any excess water, never allowing it to remain in the cane fields
and possibly destroy the planter's entire crop.25
Planting was usually done in December or January, or sometimes as
late as March. Four-, six-, or eight-horse plows were driven by the slaves
and used to break up the ground and then harrow it. The plows were

Sugar Along the Manatee 73

taken across the field a third time, in the process gouging out parallel
rows of deep furrows. Cane stalks were laid in the furrows in pieces of
2V2 to 4 feet in length placed to form two parallel rows in the furrow, 3 or
4 inches apart.26 The cuttings were then covered with a layer of soil to
protect them from the cold. As the young plants began to grow, the soil
was slowly and carefully removed. Routine cultivation was continued,
the cane remaining in the field as long as possible, and only the threat of
frost drove the planter into the field to begin his harvesting. Seed cane,
harvested at the same time, was planted as soon as it was cut or it was
placed in long beds called mattresses and covered with four or five inches
of dirt to protect it from the cold.27
To the untrained eye, the harvested cane field looked like a devas-
tated area. However, to the planter this seeming disarray was actually
ordered chaos and he well knew that this stubble would shortly produce
new plants, called ratoons, which would grow to maturity and repeat the
cycle.28 The limit of the cycle varied from a minimum of two or three
years in Louisiana to four or five years in Florida.29 Major Gamble,
writing in 1851 in response to a query from the United States Commis-
sioner of Agriculture, made the following comments about the cultiva-
tion of sugarcane on his Manatee plantation:
The culture of the sugar cane, on the large scale, is comparatively of recent date in
Florida; our experience and knowledge of its culture are consequently imperfect.
In South Florida, we find that our canes will rattoon [sic] well for five years; but I
believe that the conviction is general, that we should not rattoon [sic] longer than
three years; which, with the first or plant crop, makes a term of four years between
each planting. The establishment of sugar plantations in South Florida is so
recent, that no planter has succeeded in getting a full crop. Consequently no well
digested system of rotation has been adopted. The system which I am adopting is,
to divide my plantation into five equal portions, four-fifths of which will be planted
in cane the fifth to lie fallow. During the seasons of leisure, this portion will be
prepared in the best possible manner for planting in the ensuing spring ... The
fallow land will be ploughed very deep, with four-horse ploughs, throwing it up
into lands of seven feet, with deep water-furrows; into these furrows all the trash
of the land and the rotten begassa [sic] of the preceding crop, together with any
other manure which may have been prepared, will be collected. The land will be
again ploughed with four-horse ploughs, bedding on the deposited manure; when
this fifth is planted in cane, the oldest of the remaining sections will be ploughed
out, and subjected to the same operation. By this system, a plantation will yield
from 2,000 to 3,000 lbs. of sugar to the acre.30
The first cutting. of the cane inaugurated a season of frenzied
activity that did not cease until the sugar and molasses had been sent to
market. The cane was conveyed from the field in carts to the sugarhouse.
This was generally a two-story structure and was usually 100 to 160 feet
long by 50 to 60 feet wide.31 Cane arriving at the sugarhouse was

74 TEQUESTA

transferred from the bed of the cart through a large opening in the upper
story of the sugarhouse where it was placed on a conveyor belt or fed
directly into the sugar mill.
The sugar mill, consisting of three (or more) rollers arranged in a
vertical or horizontal position and driven by horse or steam power -
crushed the cane stalks, in the process extracting the juice from them.
Major Gamble's sugar mill employed a fifty-horsepower steam engine to
turn his conveyor belt and drive his massive set of rollers.32
While the bagasse (crushed cane stalks) continued along the con-
veyor belt, the juice was gravity fed through copper tubing or along a
wooden sluice into two or more vats.33 As the liquid flowed toward the
vats filters collected the gross particles, separating them from the juice.34
Clarification was thus begun. In an alternate method, the impurities were
allowed to sink to the bottom of the vat; the liquid was transferred
through a movable copper tube into the next vat and this procedure was
repeated several times.35 The remainder of clarification, along with the
next stage, evaporation, was done in a series of open kettles, from which
the name "open kettle method" was derived. The kettles, made of cast
iron, were set up in the center of the sugarhouse. Usually four (some-
times five) in number and arranged in order of size from largest to
smallest (the largest kettle was called the grande, the second theflam-
beau, the third the syrup, and the fourth the battery), they were carefully
positioned in a solid masonry foundation under which were contained the
furnaces and the flue that conveyed heat to them. Precisely located, the
furnace and flue were supposed to provide an even heat for the entire
range of kettles.36 On some plantations, like Major Gamble's, there were
two sets of kettles to accelerate the manufacturing process.37
The raw cane juice was transferred from the vats to the waiting
grande and a certain percentage of slake lime was added.38 Applied to
the boiling cane juice, the lime functioned as a catalyst, forcing further
impurities from the liquid. As these particles bubbled to the surface they
were skimmed off with wooden spoons and cast aside. When the sugar
maker was satisfied that all these impurities had been removed, he
motioned for the juice to be ladled into the flambeau.39
Passed into the flambeau (in a five-kettle setup the propre would be
the next kettle after the grande), foreign elements were continually
removed from the boiling cane juice. The constantly evaporating liquid
was moved down the line of kettles until it reached the battery. The sugar
maker stood at this kettle watching the boiling liquid slowly turn into a
viscous mass, waiting for the moment to "strike."40

Sugar Along the Manatee 75

He looks into the batterie, but sees more than is accorded to the vision of the
uninitiated. The dark tumbling mass of liquid sweet, appeals to his judgement in
every throe it heaves from its bosom; a large and ominous bubble will perhaps fill
him with dismay; if the mass settles down into quietude, he will yell frantically to
the old Argus at the furnace, to "throw in more wood;" perhaps the liquid will then
dance and frolic, whiten and coquette, and then comes over the face of the sugar
maker a grim smile of satisfaction, as he, with his wooden spatula, beats down and
breaks up the bubbles, that might otherwise rise too high. Now also the sugar
maker observes the syrup as it cools upon his ladle, and also sees if it will string
into threads, for the critical moment is approaching, the "strike" is at hand.4'

A slightly different method was to thrust a massive wooden spoon into
the kettle, and if, when the spoon was withdrawn the syrup on it had a
grained appearance and was so thick that it covered the spoon in a film
and drained slowly from it, the mixture had reached granulation. Various
methods, mostly unscientific and depending upon empirical observation,
were used to determine when to strike. These techniques varied from
plantation to plantation and the skilled sugar maker was extremely
secretive about his procedure, realizing that to divulge his formula would
result in the loss of his employment. On some plantations like Major
Gamble's, a vacuum pan was used in the final stage of evaporation.42 The
cane juice was transferred to the vacuum pan, where it was placed under
pressure. The pressure enabled the juice to boil at a lower temperature,
thus providing several advantages. The lower boiling point could be
reached more rapidly, and reduced the possibility of the syrup burning,
as it might in the battery. Also more sugar was obtained by this process,
and it was of better quality. Because of the lower boiling point, of course,
less fuel was needed.43
With the strike, the syrup was transferred into shallow wooden
tanks, usually made of cypress, called "coolers." It was common to have
at least six such coolers for each set of kettles. Following the completion
of granulation, the sugar was transferred from the coolers to hogsheads
and placed in the "draining room."44 The floor was composed of wooden
scantling placed crosswise about a foot apart. Cypress or brick cisterns,
16 to 20 inches deep, were built under the flooring, completely encom-
passing it.45 The freshly filled hogsheads were placed on the scantlings,
and allowed to drain. For the next 20 to 30 days, the molasses slowly
seeped through the open joints of the hogsheads.46 Then the hogsheads
were calked and sent to market. The molasses was recovered from the
floor of the cistern, placed in hogsheads, and shipped to market.47
New Orleans remained the most important market for sugar and
molasses during the antebellum era. Planters sometimes transported

76 TEQUESTA

their crop to other markets, where they hoped to receive a higher price.
This practice does not seem to have been a viable alternative for most
planters, with the result that they returned to the cheap market prices
usually prevailing in New Orleans.48 Although there is no direct evi-
dence, Major Gamble probably shipped his sugar and molasses to New
Orleans on one of the vessels that regularly plied the waters between this
port and the Manatee River.49
Major Gamble in 1850, using the equipment and techniques de-
scribed above, was able to produce 230,000 lbs. of sugar (230 hogsheads)
and 10,000 gallons of molasses from 320 acres of land, using 89 slaves.
From an investment of $82,650 ($25,000 for the sugarhouse and equip-
ment, $5,000 for the land, and $53,000 for the slaves), he was able to
realize a net profit of $9,000.50 Gamble, at this time, was apparently very
optimistic and the following year stated that 2,000 to 3,000 lbs. of sugar
were possible from each acre cultivated.5' Although his return from the
land never approximated this total, he felt secure enough in his venture to
continually increase his holdings in the early 1850s and before he left the
area he had doubled his holdings both in land and slaves.52
Although the price for Florida sugar averaged 7 cents a pound
between 1845 and 1860, the 1850s was a period when the price of sugar
fluctuated dramatically-reaching a low of 3 cents per pound in 1853-
and averaging for the decade about 6 cents per pound.53 Even with
careful management and a little luck most planters could not produce
sugar for less than 4 to 6 cents per pound.54 Gamble was one of those who
was not able to survive at these low prices. He left the plantation in the
spring of 1856, "when it was placed in other hands.55
Had Major Gamble been financially solvent he might have con-
tinued to eke out a living, hoping that sugar prices would rise, as they
eventually did; however, facing a situation where he had creditors to pay,
he could not wait for the market to adjust. The plantation was thus placed
in the hands of his principal creditor, his brother-in-law Allan Macfarlan.
Two years later, the plantation was sold to two Louisiana planters.
On December 18, 1858, Major Robert Gamble, Jr., Nancy P. Gam-
ble (John G. Gamble's wife), Catherine J. Hagner (John G. Gamble's
daughter) and Allan and Julia Macfarlan sold the entire plantation to
John Calvin Cofield and Robert McGroyson Davis for the sum of
$190,000.56 Included in the sale were 3,450 acres of land, 185 slaves, 41 of
which were from the Nehamathla plantation in Leon County, and "all the
mules, oxen, cattle, wagons, carts, and farming utensils of every descrip-
tion on or pertaining to the Manatee plantation... To have and to hold the

Sugar Along the Manatee 77

lands as described with the sugar houses, machinery, engines, sawmill,
gristmill, dwelling house and other improvements."57 Major Gamble,
after the sale of his Manatee property, returned to Middle Florida and
married Laura Wirt Randall, the daughter of Judge Thomas Randall and
Laura Wirt Randall, and lived out the remainder of his life in relative
obscurity in Tallahassee.58

NOTES

1. East Florida included all land east and south of the Suwannee River.
2. One scholar maintains that the Armed Occupation Act was not a homestead act
but a bounty law offering an incentive, land, to those who would settle along the Florida
frontier. George Stephenson, The Political History of the Public Lands (New York:
Russell and Russell, 1917), pp. 115-116.
3. The complete act can be found in Richard Peters, ed., The Public Statutes at
Large of the United States ofAmerica from the Organization of the Government in 1789, to
March 3, 1845, 8 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1850), 5:502-504;
Dorothy Dodd, "Letters from East Florida, Florida Historical Quarterly, 15 (July
1936):51-53; James W. Covington, "The Armed Occupation Act of 1842," Florida
Historical Quarterly, 40 (July 1961):41-52; John Mahon,History of the Second Seminole
War (Gainesville, Fla.: The University of Florida Press, 1967), pp. 313-314.
4. Tallahassee Floridian, September 28, 1888. Gamble was born in Richmond in
1813 and died in Tallahassee in 1906. He lived on and helped to manage his father's and
uncle's sugarcane, tobacco, and cotton plantations, and served briefly during the Second
Seminole War. Michael Schene, "Gamble Mansion," Mimeographed (Tallahassee, Fla.,
1972), pp. 27-30.
5. Major Gamble was joined by Joseph and Hector Braden, William Wyatt, and
William and John Craig, among others. Hillsborough County Deed Book A, pp. 16, 48,
81-82, 163, 179, Hillsborough County Courthouse, Tampa, Florida. One authority states
that: "Many of the settlers in the Manatee section were men from Leon County who,
reduced to financial straits by the failure of the old Union Bank, hoped to recoup their
fortunes on fertile sugar lands of the Manatee." Edwin L. Williams, "Florida in the
Union, 1845-1861" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1951), p. 88.

78 TEQUESTA

6. E[zekiel] J. Donnell, Chronological and Statistical History of Cotton (New
York: J. Sutton, 1872), pp. 206, 216, 230, 231; J.D.B. [James Dunwoody Brownson]
DeBow, The Industrial Resources, Etc., of the Southern and Western States, 3 vols. (New
Orleans, 1852-1853): 1, p. 149; Dodd, "Letters from East Florida," pp. 54-55. Williams,
"Florida in the Union," p. 227, states that "low cotton prices had caused some Florida
planters to turn to sugar culture."
7. Lillie B. McDuffee, The Lures of Manatee (Bradenton, Fla.: The Manatee
Historical Society, 1960), p. 14.
8. In 1837, John Lee Williams wrote that the area possessed an abundance of
hammock lands and a "soil [that] appears to be rich." John Lee Williams, The Territory of
Florida (1837; reprinted with an introduction by Herbert J. Doherty, Jr. in the Floridiana
Facsimile and Reprint Series, University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1962), pp. 136-137.
Hammock lands were considered to be the best cane lands in Georgia and Florida. The
soil was lighter, warmer, and drier, so cane matured earlier there. "Moreover, sugar from
such lands was equal to any in the South; its grains were not so soft and its proportion of
molasses not so large as in sugar made on swamplands." Carlyle Sitterson, Sugar
Country (Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, 1953), p. 122. In 1843 Sam Reid
surveyed the Manatee area for the United States government. He stated, at that time, that
Gamble's land had an abundance of "1st rate hammock lands." Surveyor's Field Notes,
United States Survey of Section 17, T34S, R13E, Survey conducted by Sam Reid in 1843.
Originals on file at the Internal Improvement Fund, Elliott Building, Tallahassee,
Florida.
9. Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1851, Part 11 Agriculture,
p. 327.
10. Williams, "Florida in the Union," pp. 88-89.
11. An examination of Major Gamble's indentures reveals that he paid between
$2.00 and $4.00 an acre for the land that he purchased from individuals. Manatee
County Deed Books, Manatee County Courthouse, Bradenton, Florida.
12. A careful examination of relevant sources indicates that Major Gamble did not
receive any land under the provision of the Armed Occupation Act. James W. Covington,
The Story of Southwestern Florida, 2 vols. (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co.,
1957:1, Appendix B, pp. 422-451, includes a complete list of those receiving land. Also,
the authoritative source is House Executive Documents, 28 Congress, 1st Session, No.
70, which includes the official list of persons having received land. Gamble may have
been barred due to the Act's provision that anyone owning land was not eligible.
13. Hillsborough County Tax Books, 1847, p. 2; 1855, p. 7, microfilm at Florida
State Library, R.A. Gray Building, Tallahassee, Florida.
14. The price paid for a slave varied widely during the antebellum period, ranging
from $500 in the early part of the period to $1000-1500 during the 1850s. Julia F Smith,
Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida, 1821-1860 (Gainesville, Fla.:
University of Florida Press, 1973), pp. 103-104.
15. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 160.
16. A.C. Barnes, The Sugar Cane (New York [nterscience Publishers, Inc., 1964),
pp. 1-7; Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, 2 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1949):1,
12, passim.
17. Deerr, History of Sugar, 1:10.
18. Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 145-146,
19. We have substituted "do" (ditto) for Gamble's abbreviation (. .). The first
number in each of the following pairs represents the length and the second indicates the
height along that length.
20. Major Robert Gamble, Jr. to George Patten, May 5, 1868, Charles Patten
Papers, Patten family, Sarasota, Florida, copies on file at Florida Division of Archives,

Sugar Along the Manatee 79

History and Records Management, Tallahassee, Florida [hereafter cited as Patten
Papers]. Gamble also reported on his equipment in the Tallahassee Floridian, September
28, 1888.
21. W.R. Aykroyd, The Story of Sugar (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), pp.
10-17, passim; Deerr, History of Sugar, p. 12, passim.
22. Along the Manatee River, the planter had to drain his land before it could be
cleared. In his letter to George Patten, Major Gamble stated that he "devoted vast labour
to draining [his] lands," Gamble to Patten, May 5, 1868, Patten Papers; Tallahassee
Floridian, September 28, 1888.
23. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 116.
24. Ibid., 123. H.B. Croom, a Middle Florida Planter, reported in the 1830s that
both ribbon and otaheite were grown in the peninsular state. Croom, "Some Account of
the Agricultural Soil and Products of Middle Florida, In a Letter to the Editor," The
Farmers' Register, 2 (June 1834): 1.
25. Barnes, Sugar Cane, p. 120; Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 113-114.
26. Sugarcane can be grown from seeds but then, as now, it was generally grown
from cuttings. These were stalks about a foot long, each stalk having several joints or
nodes. Once planted these cuttings could produce additional plants for several years. The
cuttings were placed in the soil at intervals of 2 to 8 feet, depending on the fertility of the
soil. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 114; Croom, "Some Account of the Agricultural Soil
and Products of Middle Florida," p. 1; Tallahassee Floridian, September 28, 1888.
27. Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 116-117.
28. At the harvest, the cane stalks were cut as close to the ground as possible. Most
of the stalks were taken to the sugar mill and processed. The remainder, called seed cane,
were planted as indicated above. The cane plant or ratoon did not die with the cutting of
the stalk. Several crops could be harvested from the first cutting. The ratoon was
cultivated in the same manner as the cutting.
29. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 119.
30. Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1851, Part II Agriculture,
p. 327. Major Gamble disagreed with those planters who did not use their "trash" (cane
leaves, cane stalks) and the bagasse as fertilizer. "Very few planters return their begassa
[sic] to the land on which it grew... These planters do not reflect that they are removing
from their lands those essential salts, without which it is impossible to produce a good
cane, and of which there is only a limited quantity in any soil." Ibid., p. 328. Writing to
George Patten in 1868, he called the removal of the trash and bagasse the "Louisiana
method" and stated that those who tried it along the Manatee River failed. Patten Papers.
He used the same techniques, indicated above, for the cultivation of both the seed cane
and the ratoons.
31. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 137 Major Gamble's sugar works were contained
in two separate structures, the main building (180 feet long and 40 feet wide), and an
additional structure 100 feet long and 90 feet wide. Gamble to Patten, May 5, 1868, Patten
Papers; Tallahassee Floridian, September 28, 1888.
32. Gamble states that his "top roller weighed 5 tons"; with two or three attached
rollers, the set weighed at least 15-20 tons. Gamble to Patten, May 5, 1868, Patten Papers;
Tallahassee Floridian, September 28, 1888.
33. These vats were shallow, rectangular boxes of cypress plank, usually lined
with copper or lead. Sitterson, Sugar Countr)y p. 140.
34. Various methods were used in collecting these gross elements. Some planters
used fine wire sieves placed at regular intervals along the length of the sluice. Other
planters placed gauze sieves, such as cheesecloth, along the sluice, while others placed
their sieves over the top of the vats. Sitterson, Sugar Country.
35. Ibid.

80 TEQUESTA

36. Ibid., pp. 137-141.
37. Gamble to Patten, May 5, 1868, Patten Papers.
38. This was figured at 6 to 24 cubic inches for every 2 to 3 gallons of juice.
39. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 141.
40. The "strike was the exact moment when the sugar maker felt that this rapidly
solidifying mass had achieved granulation.
41. TB. Thorpe, "Sugar and the Sugar Region of Louisiana," Harpers New
Monthly Magazine, 7(June 1853):765.
42. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 143. Major Gamble stated that he had a steam
(vacuum) pan at the end of each set of kettles. Boilers, driven by an eight-horsepower
steam engine, furnished steam to these pans. Gamble to Patten, May 5, 1868, Patten
Papers; Tallahassee Floridian, September 28, 1888.
43. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 146. With the boiler furnishing steam heat an even
temperature over the bottom of the kettle could be maintained. Thus the planter could
readily predict when granulation was achieved.
44. On some plantations, the draining room was located in a separate building,
while on others it was located in the sugarhouse and separated from the grinding and
evaporating equipment by a partition. Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 143-144. Major
Gamble had a draining room in the main building and an additional building that
contained a cooling and draining room. Gamble to Patten, May 5, 1868, Patten Papers;
Tallahassee Floridian, September 28, 1888,
45. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 143. Major Gamble's draining room had a "brick
cistern on each side the full length of the house and an additional building having a
cooling room... and a draining room..." Gamble to Patten, May 5, 1868, Patten Papers;
Tallahassee Floridian, September 28, 1888.
46. Molasses was a by-product of the granulation process. A thick syrup, it
naturally separated from the solid sugar crystals.
47. Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 143-144.
48. Ibid., pp. 185-192,
49. Major Gamble stated that "schooners can lay and take in cargo drawing 71/2
feet 100 yards from the landing [his dock] which is within three hundred yards of the
residence and three miles lower down [south of his dock] a vessel drawing 10V2 feet can
receive her cargo." Phrases in the brackets were added by the author. Gamble to Patten,
May 5, 1868, Patten Papers. His brother-in-law, Allan Macfarlan, also writing to George
Patten in 1868, stated that "I have sat at the front of the house and seen a schooner landing
with sugar from the plantation ... Further, I have landed and embarked at a wharf about
two miles from the house at a place belonging [to] one [Captain Joe] Atzeroth and from
[the dock] the large Gulf steamers... [run] between N. Orleans and Key West." Allan
Macfarlan to George Patten, December, 1868, Patten Papers. In the last sentence two
words have been omitted and bracketed words substituted to correct an awkward
construction. McDuffee, Lures of Manatee, pp. 78-79, says that Captains Tresca and
McNeill transported the sugar manufactured along the Manatee River to market at New
Orleans.
50. Hillsborough County Tax Books, 1850, p. 3, microfilm at Florida State Library,
R.A. Gray Building, Tallahassee, Fla., show that Gamble had 89 slaves and 1,208 acres
of land. U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census, 1850, Agricultural Schedules, Florida,
Hillsborough County, p. 111. U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census, 1850, Industrial
Schedules, Florida, Hillsborough County, p. 203. These records show that Gamble had
$82,650 invested in his business (Industrial Schedule) which included $25,000 invested
in machinery (Agricultural Schedule). Taking the average cost of a slave at $600, the 89
slaves would have cost him $53,000, and thus his 1,200 acres of land would have cost him

Sugar Along the Manatee 81

about $5,000, an acceptable and reasonable figure. The census data also show that he had
1,280 acres of land but only 320 were under cultivation (Agricultural Schedule).
51. Report of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1851, Part II Agriculture,
p. 327.
52. In 1855, he had 151 slaves and approximately 3,500 acres of land. Hillsborough
County Tax Books, 1855, p. 7, microfilm at Florida State Library, RA. Gray Building,
Tallahassee, Fla.
53. Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida, p. 215.
54. Sitterson, Sugar Country, p. 159.
55. Gamble to Patten, May 5, 1868, Macfarlan to Patten, December, 1868, Patten
Papers. One scholar maintains that only those planters relatively free from debt were able
to survive the low prices of the early 1850s. Sitterson, Sugar Country, pp. 162-165. We
know that Major Gamble had incurred mortgages with R.L. Maitland and Co., William
L. Donnell, and Alexander M. McConochice. Apparently unable to continue his pay-
ments, these mortgages of Gamble's were foreclosed on by these individuals. Macfarlan
then intervened, assuming the mortgages himself. Manatee County Deed Book A, pp.
183-184, Manatee County Courthouse, Bradenton, Florida. These foreclosures occurred
before 1854, indicating that Gamble was having problems in the early 1850s.
56. The family retained a mortgage on the plantation, thus enabling them years
later to foreclose on Cofield and Davis. The mortgage was really held by Macfarlan since
he had paid or was paying all the existing mortgages outstanding on the plantation.
Manatee County Deed Book A, pp. 78-93, Manatee County Courthouse, Bradenton,
Florida. This indenture is quite extensive and includes information not only about the sale
of the property in 1858, but also alludes to the financial arrangements made by Major
Gamble for his Manatee plantation, as well as other important pieces of family history.
57. Manatee County Deed Book A, pp. 78-81.
58. He married Laura Wirt Randall on April 28, 1857. Leon County Marriage
Record Book A, p. 8, on file at Leon County Courthouse, Tallahassee, Florida. They had
three children, two died as infants, a daughter, Katherine Elizabeth, was his only child to
survive the rigors of childhood.

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LIST OF MEMBERS

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